


An Urn For Her Ashes

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Horcruxes, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:14:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. When Voldemort inflicted the Horcrux on baby Harry, his mother’s love manifested by wrapping around it to protect him—giving Harry some personality traits and memories of Lily’s. Dumbledore takes personal charge of Harry, helping him cope with the memories and train to defeat Voldemort. Severus meets him for the first time when Harry is seventeen years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Displacement

**Author's Note:**

> So, as should be obvious from the summary, this is a major AU. There will probably be six or seven chapters, updated every seventeen days.

Severus settled comfortably back against the chair at the head of the table. Albus had asked him to arrive before the rest of the Order. Severus didn’t know why. Albus “wanted him to meet someone.”  
  
Severus knew the useful people in the Order, among the current students of Hogwarts, among the Aurors, and among the Death Eaters. Those, for example, who would work harder on the basis of a warning, or might be persuaded to give Severus some intelligence if Severus made the case compelling enough. He needed to know no one else.  
  
Albus arrived a moment later, and stood looking around as though the contents of the chamber—round wooden table, enormous phoenix mosaic of red and gold set into the middle of the floor, thick stone walls bearing portraits of three Founders—had changed in his absence. Severus watched him, motionless. Albus was an incomparable showman, and not a bad general. It was that which had fended off the Dark Lord for the past six years, after he had reappeared suddenly with the use of the Philosopher’s Stone.  
  
Severus was not going to forgive him for storing the Stone in the school and ignoring Severus’s warnings about Quirrell, of course. But some things did not need forgiveness for them to work in harmony.  
  
“Yes,” said Albus, with a sigh, and then turned around. “You can come in, Harry.”  
  
Severus sat up. Someone whom Albus was on first-name terms with, he should have met long ago. The useful Ministry officials and the like still demanded a show of deference. If Albus felt comfortable enough to use a first name—  
  
It was no familiar face who followed Albus into the room, though. It wasn’t even a  _man_. He looked like a tall, gangling teenager, with hair so red that Severus assumed he was some Weasley relative. Severus shot Albus a skeptical look, only to have Albus give him a steady, loving glance that was extraordinarily uncomfortable to endure.  
  
“Severus Snape,” Albus said, and Severus understood with a slow stirring of outrage that he was here  _to be introduced_ , as if this stranger occupied a higher social status than he did. “This is Harry Potter.”  
  
“ _Impossible_ ,” Severus said, and the sheer emotion behind his word called up magic that made the glittering glass on one of the phoenix’s outspread wings crack.   
  
The eyes that turned towards him, wide and wondering, were Lily’s, though. That extraordinary green could belong to no one else. And Potter (if it was him, although of course it couldn’t be, Harry Potter was dead with his parents, with  _Lily_ , years and years ago) had her cheekbones and the almond shape to her eyebrows and the sudden flush under scrutiny that Lily used to have until she gained some confidence.  
  
Severus shook his head to clear it. “How did this happen?” he whispered. “And it had  _better_ be convincing, Albus.”  
  
Albus only opened his hand towards the brat. Potter turned back to Severus, his hair shining around him like a flame, and said, as if reciting, “Voldemort split his soul the night he came after me, when he murdered my mum. He didn’t mean to. But part of it clung to me, and made me a Horcrux.”  
  
Severus reeled back, and the chair went over with a crash. That he didn’t was a testament to his long years of dueling, and nothing else. He had to cling to the table to keep upright.  
  
“That was why I didn’t die.” Potter lifted a hand and then dropped it as if he had been about to touch some invisible Horcrux manifestation until he remembered that Severus wouldn’t be able to see it. “She wrapped her love and sacrifice around me, and I didn’t go evil  _or_ die. She’s been keeping the Horcrux at bay for a long time.” He paused and licked his lips. “And I can feel her, sometimes. Her spirit. She’s told me a lot about you.” His eyes locked on Severus.  
  
Severus rose with his head and hands shaking. To know that part of Lily had survived, and he had  _never known_.  
  
He looked at Albus. He need say nothing. The demand would make itself plain on his face.  
  
“I thought it best to make sure that Harry was safe before I told anyone about him,” said Albus, and sighed like escaping steam. “I had intended to let him ride the train to Hogwarts in what should have been his second year. He was still having some trouble keeping Lily’s imprint and personality apart from his own spirit when he was eleven. But then Voldemort recovered the Stone, and…” He let his voice trail off.  
  
Severus had stopped shaking. He had commanded himself to stop it, and that meant he  _could_. He was the one who was master here, not his vulnerable body. He managed to nod and look in Potter’s direction.  
  
Potter watched him with bright, hopeful eyes. Eyes that looked so much like Lily’s Severus wanted to spit.  
  
But he refrained, and said only, when the hesitant smile appeared on the boy’s face, “You are  _Potter’s_ son. You were never her.”  
  
And he stalked out of the room, and managed to slam the door behind him. A triumph, as Albus had designed them so they could not ordinarily be slammed. One of the more infuriating things he had ever done, Severus had thought.  
  
Until tonight. Until tonight.  
  
*  
  
The noise of Potter’s return, or survival, or existence, whatever one wanted to call it, exploded across the countryside from the moment he gave his first interview to the papers.  
  
Severus would call it nothing. He maintained his distance, and watched.  
  
There were so many irrelevant questions that people wanted to know the answer to. What was Potter’s favorite food? Did he wish that he had been Sorted into Gryffindor, the House of his parents, and allowed to attend Hogwarts like anyone else? Did he agree with pure-blood politics or with Dumbledore’s “radicals”? What would he do after the war?  
  
In order, Severus didn’t care, knew that of course Potter wished for that, knew Potter agreed with Dumbledore because the other side wanted to  _kill him_ , and knew Potter probably wouldn’t need to make a decision because dead people didn’t.  
  
Potter was calm and polite to the reporters, which surprised Severus until he remembered that the brat had grown up under Albus’s tutelage. Obviously some nurture would replace some nature, and not even James Potter’s son could stand up to having his ego deflated regularly by the most powerful wizard in Britain.   
  
_Or the second most powerful_ , Severus thought sometimes, when he glanced down and saw the dark brand burning on his arm.  
  
Minerva, to his surprise, was one of the people overcome by the romance of it all. Of course, she had never got over James Potter’s death, or the revelation that three of her students had been unregistered Animagi.   
  
“I wish the boy had been in Gryffindor,” she said three times a day. Then six times a day. Then nine times a day. If it got to eighteen, Severus was giving himself permission to hit her over the head with the butter dish. “I wish I’d had the teaching of him. And I could have, if Albus had allowed me to  _know_ about him.”  
  
Then the old cat would blow her nose and glare wrathfully at Albus up the table. It was from one chair farther than before, since they had all been shifted one seat down the table to accommodate the Potter brat sitting at Albus’s side. When Severus followed Minerva’s gaze, he would see that red hair swaying, the brightness of it outshining the torches on the walls.  
  
Potter wore it long. If Severus had allowed himself to pretend, he could have thought it was Lily sitting there.  
  
But he looked away instead, and took a savage swallow of pumpkin juice, which he drank not because he liked the taste—he loathed it—but because it was the easiest beverage to taste potions in.   
  
He had spent long years not hoping. Nothing was allowed to change now.  
  
*  
  
Of course he attended the first Order meeting that Albus held after the boy’s reintroduction to the wider world. Albus would have commanded him to be there in any case. And just because Severus did not hope did not mean he could not indulge his curiosity. Besides his morbid desire to see the exact manner in which the Dark Lord conquered Britain, curiosity was the one vice left to him now.  
  
This time, Albus sat at the head of the table, with Potter standing beside him, hands clasped. He was taller than Severus remembered—  
  
No, Severus, sitting near the foot of the table where he could see their expressions of beaming foolishness clearly, corrected himself. He  _remembered_ Lily. He hadn’t _noticed_ Potter’s height when he first met him.  
  
Potter was not Lily. What would once have been a simple truth now needed a great deal of reinforcement. Severus sat in silence and provided it to himself.  
  
“So, you mean, we might have a chance?” It was Molly Weasley who asked the question. Her face was so pale that all the freckles seemed to have disappeared. Severus considered her and decided not to remark on her slowness in absorbing Dumbledore’s claims. It was perhaps the best moment of good sense she had shown, doubting them.  
  
Perhaps her doubt came more from grief over the death of her twin sons, killed in a battle with Death Eaters two months ago. But that was not a matter with which Severus concerned himself, note it though he did. He was unlikely to ever end up at the mercy of Molly Weasley.  
  
“Yes, that is what I am saying.” Albus beamed at them all again, and then looked at the young man at his side. “You know of the Horcruxes. Well, Harry can sense them. His mother’s spirit has given him visions of them, and their new hiding places.” Severus grimaced; it was Albus’s carelessness in leading the search that had forced the Dark Lord to move his Horcruxes from their original caches. “We can find them and destroy them quickly.”  
  
“It will be have to be  _very_ quickly,” Severus murmured. “You know he placed alarms on them that connect the shard of soul left in his body to them now. He will sense when they are destroyed.”  
  
“But thanks to Harry here,” and Albus rested his hand on Potter’s shoulder, “we should be able to prevent him from sensing their movement. Thus we can gather them and destroy them all at once, when we are ready, and coordinate an assault on Voldemort that should kill his mortal body at the same time.”  
  
Severus raised an eyebrow, reluctantly interested. It was the best plan he had heard in the past six years.  
  
Of course, considering most of the Order’s usual plan was “Charge!”, that was not holding the new one to a high standard.  
  
“What kind of magic is that?” Hermione Granger had been admitted to the Order when she was sixteen, against Severus’s recommendation. Albus—and Molly and Arthur, whose daughter she was friends with—had argued they needed her brains, but Severus did not think her brilliant or perceptive, only dogged. She squinted now at Potter. “I never heard of something like that.”  
  
Potter spoke for the first time since Albus had introduced him. Severus found himself listening for echoes of Lily’s voice in the young madman’s, and caught himself back with a grip that made reverberations like dropped iron ring in his head. “It’s because of the way my mum’s spirit absorbed the Horcrux and spread it around my body.” He reached up and touched a piece of the glowing hair. “We leave a lock of my hair, or fingernail clippings, or something like that, in place of the Horcrux, and it feels to Voldemort as if he still had a piece of his spirit there.”  
  
“Why do you say his name?” Severus asked, deciding to indulge his curiosity again.  
  
Potter blinked eyes that had no right to be that green. “Because Professor Dumbledore raised me not to be afraid of it.”  
  
Severus tried to imagine how Albus had raised the boy, a secret, all these years. He couldn’t imagine it. Nor could he imagine how Albus would have told the boy he was a Horcrux and—  
  
“What will happen to the Horcrux in Potter when we’ve gathered the others?” Severus asked abruptly, forestalling Minerva, who was trying to say something. She hissed at him a little. Severus ignored that. She could bloody well wait.  
  
Potter looked him in the eye, although Severus had in truth directed his question to Albus, and someone who had only recently emerged from the shadows into the light of reality ought to be able to tell that. “It’ll be destroyed along with the rest.”  
  
Severus stared at him, and said nothing. It was Molly who burst out, probably because Potter’s resemblance to a ginger had unbalanced her, “Oh,  _no!_ ”  
  
“There is no other choice, Molly,” said Albus, in a voice of steel gentleness Severus had never heard from him before. “Harry’s survival in the first place was a miracle. We must undo that miracle in order to destroy Voldemort.”  
  
“Professor Dumbledore told me all about it,” Potter added, in a voice as urgent as a hunting horn. His eyes and hair shone as he leaned forwards to look at Molly. “He gave me sixteen years of life I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And he showed me some visions of other paths I could have gone down. They would have been a lot worse. Please, let me do this much. It’s the only way I can pay you back for suffering through the war when I didn’t have to.”  
  
He sounded impossibly noble. But Severus had no doubt he meant every word.  
  
Black fire filled his belly.  
  
_He is this way because Albus raised him to be. Not because he would have chosen the path of such extreme nobility of his own free will, but because Albus wanted him to. He’s talking about sacrificing things he doesn’t even_ know  _about. How could he know anything about a normal life when Albus kept him hidden for sixteen years?_  
  
But open opposition against the leader of the Order, in front of the Order, would be suicide. Severus knew enough to wait, and listen, as Harry Potter explained with grand gestures, borrowed from Albus, about his plan to destroy the Dark Lord.  
  
“We’ll come to the—prepared battlefield.” A quick glance at Albus showed Severus that Potter had been instructed not to reveal where that battlefield, exactly, was. “I’ll cast a spell that destroys the piece of hair or nail we left behind to replace the Horcruxes, so that Voldemort knows they’re gone. He’ll either Apparate to where we are, then, or I’ll draw them there.”  
  
“You,” Severus said. “A seventeen-year-old.”  
  
Potter turned and looked him in the eye with that disconcerting stare again. “That’s the age of majority in the wizarding world, isn’t it? Old enough to make my own decisions.”  
  
“Not old enough,” Severus said, leaning forwards slightly to emphasize his point, “to bring the Dark Lord where he does not want to be brought.”  
  
Potter gave a twisted smile that surprised Severus, it seemed so self-aware. “He doesn’t know about the Horcrux in me, and that gives me an advantage. When I’ve gathered all the Horcruxes in one place, and then I invoke the power of the one behind my scar, I can essentially summon him like a demon. He only has one piece of soul left in his body, and it’s pretty small and tattered. It’s not enough to resist the drawing power of seven other pieces.”  
  
Severus considered. He had never heard of such magic, but he had to admit that it sounded plausible.  
  
Of course, if Severus had trusted his survival to the way things sounded, he would have died during the first war.  
  
“If the spell does not work as you expect, and does not bring you the Dark Lord’s own body?” he asked.  
  
Potter gave a complicated heave of his shoulders, as though he was settling a large weight. “Then I seek him out. I don’t think it’ll be too hard. He’ll be pretty eager to find me, after sensing a Horcrux he didn’t know about.”  
  
Severus silently agreed.  
  
“Someone else still needs to come with me, though, so they can kill him after I die.” Potter looked straight at him again. “Would you be willing to volunteer, Professor Snape? Professor Dumbledore thought you would, since you knew my mother and you have the score of her death to settle with Voldemort.”  
  
Severus pinched his lips shut over the refusal he wanted to give, and pondered it carefully. He knew that Albus was up to his old tricks, trying to manipulate Severus, even if the boy was utterly unaware that he was the conduit for the manipulation.  
  
But this time, Severus thought he could see several possibilities for finding his way forwards. Changing things the way they should be changed. He nodded sharply, and Potter smiled as if Severus was doing him a personal favor.  
  
“Good!” Albus clasped his hands and beamed around at the other members of the Order. “Then we only need to acquaint you with your part in the plans, and the way that we’ll need to act if Voldemort attacks before they’re complete.”  
  
*  
  
“Professor Snape, sir?”  
  
Severus turned around slowly. It was still incredible that a Potter should be that respectful to him. Yes, perhaps Potter hadn’t been raised by his father and didn’t look much like him, but he was still a Gryffindor in all the ways that mattered.  
  
His willingness to throw his life away, nobly, stupidly, showed that.  
  
“Yes, Potter?” Severus asked, his voice meant to be repressive. He had been walking towards his quarters in the dungeons when Potter had overtaken him. He continued striding on his way now, annoyed that he had stopped or even slowed.   
  
“Professor Dumbledore thought I should tell you how many of my mother’s memories I have,” Potter said. “So you wouldn’t be upset if you found out later.”  
  
Severus did not stop because of the silent resolve that nothing else would make him do so, but he did feel as though someone had jabbed him in the stomach with a spear. “How many do you, then?” he asked, in the sort of voice he would have used to an apothecary who had told him the shop was out of beetle eyes.  
  
“A lot,” said Potter. His voice was low, and when Severus glanced sideways at him, because he had to, Potter was walking with his eyes fixed ahead of him on the far wall of the corridor. “When she was a child and met you. When she was in school and doing Potions, and you helped her sometimes. When she…”  
  
He turned around and stopped. Severus decided it would be ridiculous to keep going, silent vow or no, and stopped, too. But he had no intention of looking Potter directly in the eyes, not this time. He was not Lily.  
  
_No matter how much he looks like her. No matter if some of her lives on in him._  
  
“When she decided to stop being friends with you,” Potter whispered. “Professor Dumbledore was upset because that was when I learned the word Mudblood.”  
  
Severus’s muscles felt like stone, his stomach like oil. He kept staring. He could see what Potter had thought was so fascinating about the far wall of the corridor. It had a certain mesmerizing beauty if viewed from the sort of eyes that had nothing else to look at.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Severus turned around. Potter looked back at him, and this time, Severus could not read his expression. Not Lily, not the noble boy getting ready to sacrifice himself, not the stranger he had been at first. This was a different man.  
  
“You must be lying,” said Severus. “Dumbledore gave you those memories.”  
  
He said that even though he knew Albus had been nowhere near when he lost Lily. He spoke the words because the other possibility, the sudden surge of need to do something besides wait for the end of the war, would destroy him. Destroy his path and his near-neutrality, his despair and his hatred, and send him spinning in a new direction.  
  
“No,” said Potter. “No, sir, I’m really not. Here.” He stepped in front of Severus and lifted his chin again. Severus didn’t know what he was doing until Potter whispered, “Dumbledore told you could do it, too. Read people’s minds. Can you do that and see that I’m not lying?”   
  
Severus stuck before Potter could take the invitation back, riding into his mind and expecting a childish whirl of memories. Instead, he felt coolness as practiced Occlumency shields, strong as stone, peeled smoothly back and let him in, leading him to a different kind of memory.   
  
And the truth.  
  
There were Lily’s memories, shimmering along the edge with green and golden light, and grey that reminded Severus of fleeting images glimpsed on a Muggle telly. There he was, that day after exams, turning upside-down by the wand of James Potter. And there Lily was, squinting at books, and cradling an upside-down bundle Severus could only assume was the boy in front of him now, and turning as the Dark Lord came in through the doorway.  
  
Severus wrenched himself sharply free. Potter made a wounded little sound and crumpled to his knees, bowing his head for a second. Then he straightened and stood up once more, eyes seeking Severus’s.  
  
“What do you think of your father?” Severus whispered harshly. “The bully?”  
  
“Are you asking what  _I_ do, or what my mum does?” Potter’s smile was sudden, sharp, painful. “Because sometimes it’s hard to be sure.”  
  
Severus turned away and walked down the corridor with a long, racing stride. Potter didn’t call after him, although Severus was sure he stood still and watched him go.  
  
Severus was not running away. But he needed to think, and he couldn’t do that near Potter.  
  
Or the remnant of Lily that it seemed was still alive in him.  
  
_Lily._


	2. Glimpses of an Unburied Past

Severus knocked firmly on Albus’s office door, and settled in to wait. Sometimes, he had to let an unforgivable length of time pass before Albus would deign to take notice. And sometimes, Severus didn’t care about that.  
  
His mind was firmer than it had been the last few days. Potter was off making friends with the Weasleys, or plotting with the members of the Order. Severus could look at Albus without Lily’s eyes coming in between them and making him do something that might sour his long-term relations with his second master.  
  
Albus finally relented and opened the door, although he sat behind his desk rather than on the other side of it. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Severus?” he asked quietly, as Severus stalked into the room.  
  
Severus ignored the attempts at intimidation, except to note that Albus must be more on the defensive than he’d assumed. It was rare for Albus to slip so badly that he forgot that voice and posture didn’t work on Severus.  
  
“I want to know why you didn’t tell us about the boy right away.” Severus didn’t sit. There were plush chairs and wooden chairs, and neither was conducive to his plans. He stood in easy alertness, gaze brushing past the perch where Fawkes normally sat. He was gone. Albus had probably sent him on the sort of mission owls couldn’t be trusted with.  
  
“I believe I did answer that question.” Albus laced his fingers together. “Harry was in no fit state to be seen by the public until he managed to achieve some sort of balance between Lily’s spirit and his own.”  
  
 _And her name might have worked as a hammer against me, if I was unprepared. Careless to allow me the time_ to  _prepare, old man_. “I don’t mean when he was twelve,” Severus said, with quietness of his own. “Why not right away? Why not announce that someone had lived through the massacre at the Potter house? You know your cloak of secrecy will make it more difficult for the Order to accept him as their savior now.”  
  
Albus relaxed a little.  _Yes, think that’s all there is to my motives,_ Severus thought, watching Albus from behind the thickest Occlumency shields he had ever raised.  _Think that I care only about your chances of winning this war._  
  
“Well, the Order seems to be taking to him.” Albus smiled at Severus and waved a hand towards a chair. Severus drifted in that direction, but didn’t sit. Albus sighed a little. “If I  _had_ intended to announce him to the wizarding world, your question would be fair. But I didn’t know if Harry would live, at first. The Horcrux and the struggle he had with Lily’s spirit made it uncertain.”  
  
“Struggle?” Severus knew the word had been too quick when Albus smiled again. He forced himself to retreat to the place he often achieved during brewing or intense Occlumency study, when his mind was sheathed with steel and his breaths as regular as a ticking clock. “He seemed to accept his mother’s love fully and know her as a distinct entity. What kind of struggle could there be?”  
  
“Oh, when he was a child he would spend much time crying when Lily’s memories were at the forefront of his mind,” Albus blithely explained. “And he struggled to understand concepts like the deaths she’d seen and experiences she’d had as a student at Hogwarts long before the words were available to him.” He shot Severus a glance that might have been sly with more practice. “I think she survived better than someone might have anticipated, though. There’s more of her in him even than it looks like.”  
  
Severus turned immediately in a new direction, possible because of the steel sheathing around his mind. “You didn’t shield his mind from her touch?”  
  
“I couldn’t do so without dimming the protection that kept the Horcrux at bay, my boy.”  
  
 _You’re a master Legilimens, and you took the risk of looking into a child’s developing thoughts. You could damn well have done something about it._  
  
But Severus played the role the Headmaster had already visibly assigned him in this little drama, the scorned lover concerned only about the scornful love. “He seems to look remarkably like her. I thought she had borne a child more like Potter.” If he didn’t use Lily’s name, Albus might think it still worked as a weapon on him.  
  
“Harry did look like James when he was born.” This time, it was probably James’ name that was meant to fall on his shields, Severus thought. “The messy black hair and the shape of his face, especially. Although his eyes have always been Lily’s.”  
  
“So his appearance changed when her spirit took possession of him?” More confirmation for the theory Severus was forming.   
  
“Oh, yes.” Albus gave him a quick smile. “And a handsomer lad you couldn’t hope to see, I think, Severus. At least it gave him that advantage.”  
  
 _What advantage, when he lived his life far away from not only cheering crowds but the attention his looks might have gained him?_ But Severus remained bland and blank-faced, only inclining his head. “I see.”  
  
“I thought you might.” Albus sighed and stood up, coming around the desk to put his hand on Severus’s shoulder. Severus looked up and inwardly rejoiced. He had fooled Albus better than he’d thought he might, if Albus was utterly convinced that Severus could respond to his touch like a protégé.  
  
“I know how hurt you are, Severus, that I concealed the survival of a part of Lily from you,” Albus told him gently. “And that you only have a chance to get to know that part in the months before it dies. But I thought the extra sixteen years of survival Lily had might soften the blow.”  
  
 _He thinks in terms of blows without knowing how much I can absorb. How flattering._ “I was indeed surprised,” Severus said, “to know that anything of—” He paused deliberately, to make Albus think of the bravery that Gryffindors loved. “ _Lily_ lived. But I examined one of the boy’s memories, and I believe it genuine.”  
  
“It is genuine.” The smile was gone from Albus’s face now, and he was nodding slowly, as though the speed of the motion would affect what Severus thought of Potter. “I could hardly believe it when I came into the wreckage of the house and discovered Harry crying and Lily dead. But he survived. And sometimes I’ve felt Lily’s essence actually speak to me when I connect with Harry’s mind.”  
  
Severus went on high alert, because this was something that would affect any plans he might make. “What does she say?”  
  
“Oh, things she said when she was alive,” said Albus comfortably. “Conversations that we had in the past. Phrases she sometimes used with frequency in Order meetings. I hear them echoing down the halls of Harry’s mind as though someone was shouting them from a distance.” He sighed wistfully. “Of course I wish both Harry and his parents could have lived—”  
  
 _You shouldn’t. Lily would have stopped at nothing to keep you from sacrificing her son._  
  
“—but at least this way, Harry manages to know his mother, a little. He knows what she liked and what she said and what her favorite expressions were. It’s more than many orphans ever have of their parents.”  
  
Severus relaxed, not that Albus would be able to tell that, any more than he would have been able to tell that Severus was alert and waiting for confirmation of his suspicions. That confirmed his private theory.  
  
“You think the boy cannot survive without the Horcrux?”  
  
Albus shook his head. “For the same reason that I couldn’t disentangle Lily’s spirit from Harry. The Horcrux has worked itself deeply into him, made itself part of  _his_  mind and spirit.” He paused, and his voice was musing as he added, “Harry’s told me that sometimes he feels as if he doesn’t really know himself. Who’s Harry and who’s Lily, I mean. Or sometimes he gets dark dreams and wonders if they’re the Horcrux instead.”  
  
 _And you would never encourage the boy in such confusion, of course._  
  
Severus started to speak, but Albus continued. “There are times that I think rest will be a panacea for Harry. There’s certainly no other way that he can get rid of that confusion, not when he’s grown up with it from such a young age.”  
  
“By rest, you mean death.” Severus would have liked to shift and draw a cloak around himself, but he hadn’t worn a cloak to Albus’s office.  
  
“Yes.” Albus gazed directly at him, and then smiled wearily. “Forgive me, Severus. These are matters I can’t speak of to anyone else in the Order. And I thought, with your complicated feelings about Harry’s parents, you can understand my complicated feelings about Harry.”  
  
 _I understand enough._  
  
Severus stood with a small inclination of his head. “Indeed, Albus. Though it will take me a while to forgive you for having lied to me.”  _And myself for not having caught the lie._  
  
“I defended the secret I thought necessary to the saving of the world.”  
  
 _And you made sure, by his sudden introduction to the Order like this, that more people would be willing to see him die for their freedom. Not so easy to surrender a child that you watched grow up, or that you’ve known since he was eleven. No, better to go with someone who can play the bright and shiny martyr._  
  
But Severus thought Albus had misjudged some of the other Order members, and Severus might reap the benefit of that misjudgment, in the end. For now, he only nodded and murmured, “I understand. But my forgiveness is still slow in coming.”  
  
“But you always get there in the end, my boy. It was a risk I chose to take.”  
  
Not many people would have noticed the touch of frost now coming into Albus’s voice. Albus might not notice it himself. But Severus did, and although he bowed one time more and turned away, the bow was one of farewell.  
  
 _I can do what I wish to._  
  
*  
  
Severus stood concealed in the shadows just off the Quidditch pitch, watching the youngest Weasley son and daughter teach Potter the game. Potter was laughing in incredulous freedom as the brooms dipped up and down, and he swooped after the Snitch with the skill of a Seeker born.  
  
 _Why did Albus not allow him to play?_  
  
Severus could not fathom it, no matter how he thought about it. Without other brats around, Potter would not have become distracted from saving the world by a simple game. It might even have encouraged the sort of dodging and other physical skills that could serve the boy well in battle.  
  
Then Severus curled his lip. Albus didn’t expect a battle, didn’t want one. Potter was supposed to hunt for Horcruxes, but mainly to be a martyr. And if he had the game—would he have had something to live for?  
  
 _It might be that._  
  
One of the things Severus despised the most about the circumstances was that he simply could not be  _sure_ of some Albus’s motivations. Perhaps it was as bad as it seemed. Perhaps it was not. But Severus would not have the ability to sit back and study the situation for as long as he needed to reach a clear and objective conclusion. Albus would force the search for the Horcruxes to begin as soon as he could.   
  
Severus turned and scanned the border of the Quidditch pitch. There were always a few Order members around the boy, as if to act like chains should he make a move to run away. That was the only encouraging thing Severus had seen so far about Albus’s influence over the boy. Albus might not rate it as high as he seemed, if he feared exposure to the wider world would make Potter run.  
  
Granger read a book off to the side, frowning a little. Severus had no doubt the book was on the theory of Horcruxes. Alastor Moody stood next to the lake and contemplated the depths as if he thought the Dark Lord’s latest threat would break loose from them. And Molly Weasley stood anxiously watching her children, as well. She had practically moved into the castle since the twins’ deaths.  
  
A woman who had lost two children. A woman who could bond fiercely to an orphan in need, and might oppose even a plan of Albus’s that involved the sacrifice of a child, if someone could present it to her in the right way.  
  
Severus gave a single tight-lipped smile and turned back to survey the game. Potter turned around from a sweep after the Snitch and gave the shadowed corner a single nod.  
  
Severus tensed hard enough to hurt his arms for a moment, and then knew what had happened. He had sometimes stood here to watch Lily.  
  
With a snap of his cloak, he turned abruptly back to the castle.  
  
*  
  
Severus nodded and laid the book aside. Yes, everything he had read about necromantic theory—which was much, but which he hadn’t revised for some years—accorded with his belief. If it were truly Lily Potter’s  _spirit_ that was bound to the Potter boy’s, then there would have been more signs than memories and an influence in his looks. What Potter hosted was not a surviving fragment of Lily’s soul.  
  
And Severus’s way forwards was clear.  
  
Someone knocked on the door. Severus went still and listened. As far as most people in the castle knew, he should have been asleep by now. Albus would have come in uninvited, but he would have used the Floo and not the door, and that would also have been the route that Pomfrey would use to inform Severus if he was needed in the hospital wing.  
  
Someone unfamiliar with the castle routines would have knocked, though. Someone not already connected with the Floo.  
  
Severus moved slowly towards the door.  _He_ had no lingering memories. He had only hopes that he could not allow to trick him. It reminded him of why he had given up the habit of hoping.  
  
Until now.   
  
Severus grimaced and opened the door, nearly receiving a fist in the face. He ducked out of the way with a hiss and stood staring at the boy, who pushed a handful of fire-colored hair out of his eyes and smiled nervously.  
  
“Can I come in, Professor Snape?” he asked.  
  
Severus studied him. Those green eyes darted around and past him, and down the corridor. The chances that Albus had put him up to this and might now be listening in were remote, Severus judged.  
  
He still tried to touch the boy’s mind with Legilimency as Potter passed him, but this time, those flexible walls hardened and threw him out before he could see anything. Severus leaned against the door and blinked.  
  
“Sorry,” Potter said, grimacing. “But sometimes Albus snoops in my head and I had to get used to that.”  
  
Severus said nothing, instead simply sitting down in the first chair that came to hand and staring at Potter. He must have found out the location of Severus’s quarters from someone. It wasn’t something Lily would have known, since Slughorn had lived in a different set of rooms.  
  
Potter stood looking around as if the very difference of Severus’s rooms from his memories made it worth looking at, and Severus sighed and finally said, “Why did you come here?”  
  
“I saw the way you were looking at me today when I was flying.” Potter turned around and leaned a casual arm against the fireplace mantel. Severus tried to picture either Lily or  _James_ Potter doing such a thing, and couldn’t. At least Potter was his own man in one respect. “Not with pity, like Granger does, or with that desperate desire to see me prove myself that Albus uses.”  
  
 _Desperate desires to see you prove yourself? How interesting of you to categorize it that way._ But Severus only asked, “What did you think my expression was like?”  
  
Potter’s response was immediate and quiet. “As if you were trying to come up with a way to save my life.”  
  
Severus blinked and sat up. Potter was once again examining his fingernails. Then he turned, and Severus saw the savage glow of life in his eyes.   
  
Lily’s had never looked like that, except perhaps at the end, when she stood defying the Dark Lord. Severus wouldn’t know.  
  
“You’re speaking now,” Severus said, in a voice that he felt was mild and warm compared to what he might have said, “like someone who doesn’t want to die.”  
  
Potter lifted his head. Severus had the distinct feeling he was counting under his breath, or perhaps only inside his mind, because listen as he might, Severus couldn’t pick up any sound. “I do.”  
  
“Then why not tell Albus about it?” Severus circled slowly to the side, watching Potter all the time. It was one thing to try and protect Lily’s legacy when it was an oblivious brat eager to martyr himself on Albus’s say-so. But someone who knew and yet had marched this far to his doom…“He had sixteen years to find another solution.”  
  
Potter smiled. It was a smile that might have greeted Severus in a mirror, and for that reason alone, he grunted a little and stepped back. Potter only followed him, gaze intent. “Because he can’t risk the Horcrux surviving. And he didn’t want to kill my mum’s spirit. That’s what he said.” Potter looked away from Severus. “He doesn’t seem to mind killing me.”  
  
 _Yes, he does,_ Severus could have said.  _That’s why he wants you to sacrifice yourself. Murder is beyond him even when his ethics demand it._  
  
But Severus was largely uninterested in what Albus’s ethics demanded, and therefore he stuck to the subject. “Saving you, or touching your mind, would not entail killing your mother’s spirit. She did not survive.”  
  
Potter worked one hand on the mantel. He said nothing.  
  
Once again, Severus found himself off-balance. He hadn’t anticipated a storm of tears, but silence was too far from his expectations for him to know what to do with it. “You don’t care about that?”  
  
“I always suspected it,” Potter whispered, and turned around. His eyes had the sheen of tears, but were dry nonetheless. “The memories I had, and the snatches of conversation that came from those memories, and the way that she—what Albus said was her spirit—the way it  _felt_ —it wasn’t like contact with someone else who was living.”  
  
“I hardly believe that touching another embodied human being would teach you what a spirit feels like,” Severus said, because he had to.  
  
Potter looked at him with the same dull fever-glitter. “I forgot. You didn’t know. Albus was training me in Legilimency and…other forms of sight from the time I was three years old. I knew what his mind felt like. A  _living_ mind.” He reached out and put a hand on his heart. “I knew it wasn’t her mind as an independent thing inside me.”  
  
“Despite what Albus and you said to the Order about her continuing to offer you advice?” Severus asked.  
  
Potter moved his head a little. “It’s something Albus thought was true, after he heard her memories speaking in my thoughts. And I went along with it.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Potter turned his head a little, so that Severus could see both his eyes and his scar at the same moment, for the first time. “Because it was inspirational. And pleased him.”  
  
For a moment, standing there with their eyes connected and perhaps with Legilimency whispering back and forth between them, the kind that could sift and sieve surface thoughts, Severus glimpsed what the past sixteen years of isolation had meant to Potter. Only one person to know, one person to please, one person to love, and knowing that person was raising him for death.   
  
“Wouldn’t you,” Potter whispered, “have clung to life in any way you could?” Again his hand tightened on the mantel. “I thought, if I could make him love me enough, he wouldn’t ask me to die.”  
  
Severus broke the eye contact and stared in silence at his chair. He couldn’t ask the question that bubbled in his throat, but Potter answered it anyway.  
  
“It’s not her spirit. It’s a sort of psychic impression of her, I think. My mother’s love is literally imprinted into my skin.” Severus glanced at him again and saw him touching the scar. “It had to be, with the Horcrux imprinted into me. And part of her got imprinted onto my mind in the same way. Albus talks all the time about how open and impressionable my mind must have been when I was a baby. Why  _wouldn’t_ it pick something up from her as she died? That’s  _my_  first memory, you know,” Potter added more quietly. “The green light of the Killing Curse flashing, and her scream as she died.”  
  
It was more than Severus had ever known about Lily’s death. He stood still, and then asked, “But the Horcrux is a magic of the soul, so wouldn’t her protection need to be soul-bound, as well?”  
  
He already knew the answer from his studies of necromancy, but he was curious to see how far Potter’s intellect had taken him. Potter blinked and answered at once, “No. The Horcrux is soul  _magic,_ but it can be contained in any sort of vessel. At least one of the ones that Voldemort made is in a locket, for instance. Destroying the vessel will destroy the Horcrux. But you can put all sorts of protective enchantments and charms on one, which will protect the shard of soul without being soul magic themselves.”  
  
 _So. An answer through the medium of the Dark Arts, instead of through necromancy._ Severus nodded, and saw Potter straighten.   
  
“Was it only the look in my eyes this afternoon that made you come to me?” he asked then.  
  
Potter grimaced. “No. The strongest memories I received from my mum are of her time with me and Dad, but the second strongest are of you. And, well, Mum and Dad are dead. You’re the only one I thought might care enough about Mum to protect me.”  
  
“Even though, as you say, she is dead, and her legacy does not survive in you in the same way that Albus thinks it does and told me it did.”  
  
“No,” Potter said, and looked up and into his face. His voice was a whisper now. “I’m used to not being valued for what I am. I thought—I thought you might at least care enough for something I’m not to preserve it, instead of destroy it.”  
  
Severus had no response to that. He stood there and waited, and waited, and waited, for the waves of rejection to crash through him. He wouldn’t be saving as much of Lily’s legacy as he had originally thought, if he saved Potter’s life. He would be saving equally as much of James Potter. The child of the man he had hated and the woman who had grown to despise him.  
  
But it didn’t matter. Not with the oaths he had sworn, and the fact that Albus had lied to him and never even told Severus of the boy’s existence.  
  
Perhaps if he had, things would have been different. But there was no reason to think that things  _could_ happen differently. This was the reality Severus was standing in.  
  
With a Harry Potter who wasn’t so Gryffindor after all, and who had learned to think in ways not defined by the House he should have been in, had he attended Hogwarts.  
  
“We will work on it,” he said.  
  
And Harry Potter smiled with eyes as keen as a diving eagle’s, with a flame in them that was not his mother’s, and Severus learned some of the warm side of hope again.


	3. Making Alliances, Making Gifts

Severus slowly opened his eyes, feeling the cold hand that had brushed his brow retreating. He stood at the Dark Lord’s whispered command, although he kept his gaze on the floor in front of him until he heard the rough order to look up.  
  
The Dark Lord had become a strange creature in the last few years. Severus suspected—at the bottom of his soul, behind private Occlumency walls so strong that not even Albus had ever breached them—that the Elixir distilled from the Philosopher’s Stone hadn’t worked exactly as the Dark Lord had hoped. Either that, or he had added other potions and herbs to it, trying to achieve even more magical strength.  
  
Now he lounged on his throne, human from the waist up. From the waist down, he twisted into a pair of scaled trunks that resembled nothing so much as a split shark’s tail, at least in shape. He could bring them together to walk, and he could swim with a deadly grace and speed. Severus had seen scales ringing his wrists, too, in the rare moments when the thin sleeves around his arms fell back.  
  
It might make him harder to defeat. Since Severus had learned of the Horcruxes, however, he was not certain of that.  
  
“Interesting news you bring me, Severus,” the Dark Lord hissed softly. In the shadows beside him, his serpent moved, never far away, and always hoping that the Dark Lord would let her prey on whatever Death Eater was now kneeling in front of him. This time, however, his attention remained on Severus. “One would have thought you would bring it to me the moment the boy appeared.”  
  
“Without knowing everything?” Severus asked, raising an eyebrow. Sometimes he could get away with this, and other times he suffered. But with senses attuned to the Dark Lord in a way they’d never been to anyone save Lily, he thought he could risk it this time. “I didn’t know how the boy had survived at first, my Lord. Or the most dangerous secret, the one I revealed to you this evening.”  
  
The moment froze around him like black amber, and that was the moment when Severus thought he might not escape with his life. But the Dark Lord’s chuckle answered his gambit, rustling like paper on fire, and Severus lowered his gaze.  
  
“Yes. It  _does_ please me that Albus’s weapon should have a mind of his own and wish to turn against his master. I hope that Albus may know it, before I kill him.” The Dark Lord reached out and explored Severus’s jaw and mouth with fingers that Severus knew must have lost some of their sensitivity in the past year. He had seen the Dark Lord refuse to flinch from fire a few times, not even seeming to notice it. “And you will heed my instructions for getting rid of that weapon?”  
  
His hand tightened, making Severus’s eyes water as his teeth ground together. But he managed a nod nonetheless, and the Dark Lord retreated and began hissing to Nagini without paying any attention to him.  
  
Severus backed out of the room in a low crouch. Then he turned and made his way through the darkened, musty corridors of the house the Dark Lord had adopted as his own to the Apparition point.  
  
His eyes marked the placement of torch sconces, the doors that careless Death Eaters left open, the number of house-elves that worked here—always looking for small advantages, gaps in the defenses, ways that might hurt the Dark Lord. It had only been an intellectual exercise for years now. Severus had come to accept the Dark Lord’s ultimate triumph while hating it at the same time.  
  
Now he felt his memories leaping to life with the new insights behind his eyes, joining together, breeding like rabbits.  
  
 _Now, anything might be important._  
  
*  
  
“What news do you bring us from the heart of Voldemort’s domain, Severus?”  
  
Severus watched the people around the table sway as if from wind in a wheatfield, and it occurred to him, for the first time, that Albus used that name almost exclusively to strike fear into others. When he was alone with Severus, the motive might be different, but not here, with Order members who had good  _reason_ to fear the Dark Lord.  
  
It would hardly do to display his emotions and his discoveries so openly, however. Severus simply bowed and murmured, “He knows of Potter, of course. He seems, at the moment, to dismiss him as a threat.”  
  
His eyes met Potter’s across the table. There was a faint lift to his lips that someone could mistake as many things. Only Severus knew it was a response to his own message, that he had told the Dark Lord the truth as they had planned, about Potter having his own mind.  
  
And Potter was  _thrilled_. It meant the Dark Lord would dance to their tune, and not Albus’s.  
  
 _If this works. If we get it right._  
  
But the doubts would not help him right now, and Severus set them ruthlessly aside and continued to brighten the twinkle in Albus’s eyes. “He told me that I should have the task of killing Potter.”  
  
“You’d like to anyway, wouldn’t you?”  
  
Severus didn’t bother looking at Moody. “Silence your hound, Albus, or I will.”  
  
“Now,  _Severus_ ,” Albus said, with one hand raised as though he was conducting an orchestra. “Alastor is allowed to have his reservations.”  
  
 _How did I not notice that he guides me in dislike of them as well? I wonder if part of it was that he thought I might seek to preserve Lily’s legacy, once I knew of it, and wanted to deny me allies._  
  
Severus paid no attention to Molly Weasley. He had sent her an owl telling her to leave her Floo open at home later that day, if she was interested in a message that might help guarantee Potter’s survival. She was turning a bit red now, but maintaining her silence.  
  
“And I am allowed to have my expertise on the Dark Lord,” Severus said, with a sneer that he knew should convince Albus Severus was still his tool if anything did. “He intends me to both succeed and fail.”  
  
“How is that?” Albus was almost leaning across the table now, one hand spread out as if that would coax Severus to speak faster.  
  
“He wishes me to destroy Potter for him but preserve the Horcrux,” Severus began, spinning out a lie he had hammered out with Potter last night. He held Albus’s gaze, and grimaced. Albus was the only one here, bar Potter, who knew the full story of his involvement with Lily. Albus was the only one who would attach the meaning to the words that Severus wanted. “He thinks he can prepare a vessel that will capture the shard of spirit as it flies.”  
  
“But Professor Dumbledore told us that Mrs. Potter’s spirit is wrapped around the Horcrux.” Hermione Granger, fussy and upright and her arms braced on the table as if she would push herself up to shake her finger at anyone who disagreed. “How are you going to take the Horcrux away from her? Shouldn’t she have changed it enough because she’s good and it’s evil?”  
  
 _And this is why the girl will never be brilliant,_ Severus thought, his disgust thick enough to float a ship on. Minerva might sing Granger’s praises in theoretical understanding, but Granger preferred theory to practice, and had never accepted that something which violated the rules or bent the laws--or broke them--might be practical or ensure triumph.  
  
However, Severus need not exert himself or change his behavior to act as he always did around the Granger girl. He briefly held her eyes, then turned away, the very brevity saying what he thought of her interruption.   
  
“He appears to think that the Horcrux is untouched by the spirit,” Severus told Albus. “That he can retrieve it and it will be whole. He wishes me to lure Potter into a trap and destroy his physical body only.”  
  
Albus chuckled a little. “Does he think that a Horcrux survives the destruction of its physical vessel? The protective spells he has wrapped around the other Horcruxes argue otherwise.”  
  
 _Careful, careful,_ Severus told himself, and allowed his body no motion.  _Albus is still clever, and you should have expected him to disbelieve at least part of your story._    
  
“He seemed to believe that a Horcrux contained in a living being might be different,” Severus muttered, and cast his eyes down as he allowed hostility to shade his voice. “I could not convince him that he might be wrong. In fact, he might be right.” He leaned back and crossed his arms and stared at Albus again. “How much does  _anyone_ know about living Horcruxes, Albus? They’re not exactly common.”  
  
Molly stirred as if she would open her mouth, but in the end, closed it again. Severus was as glad. It would never do to tip his hand when they might actually have a chance at winning the game.  
  
“I have had sixteen years to make a study, my boy,” said Albus. He put a hand on Potter’s shoulder. Potter stood up under his touch and radiated sincerity. Severus took a moment to admire that. His own acting job would have to hold up under considerable scrutiny from two powerful wizards, but Potter had maintained an illusory willingness to die that would have been beyond Severus.   
  
“I am confident in my conclusions,” Albus went on serenely, and abruptly turned and swept the whole table of the Order of the Phoenix with an appealing gaze. “Would I ever sacrifice a young life  _needlessly_? Or, one could say, two lives, joined together?’  
  
 _One life,_ Severus thought.  _Haunted by memories._ He stared at Potter with an expression he hoped would come across to Albus as seeking and not finding the answer in Potter.  _And of course you would sacrifice people, Albus. You always have. You’re in love with the poetry and the romance of it, sending people off to martyrdom and speaking movingly of what the world lost in them._  
  
 _I’m not even sure if you would have the barrier of guilt in this case, though. How much do you_ believe  _in Potter as his own person? How much, to you, is he Lily, her second chance at life?_  
  
“Of course you would never do that, Professor Dumbledore.” Granger was sitting like a soldier at attention, all her worshipful young righteousness concentrated on Albus. “I’m—sorry, Harry. I would have liked a chance to get to know you better.”  
  
Potter gave her a soulful smile. “It’s all right. I’m glad that you got the chance to know this much of me. And you know the  _best_ parts of me, anyway. My mum’s soul, and my willingness to die for the sake of the world.” He bowed his head, but otherwise stood there unbending under Albus’s touch.  
  
Severus’s breath came short for a moment. Potter was  _good_. He wove his armor of courage and heroism, in a way that Severus had woven his of shadows and concealment, and he made others fall in love with an illusion.  
  
Severus wished he could be alone with Potter right now, in a place they could speak freely of how he had learned to do that. He must have learned by himself, or rather from the opposite of the example that Albus had set him, since he had no one to teach him.  
  
“I would have liked,” Molly said suddenly.  
  
Albus turned to her, all benignant brightness. “Yes, Molly?”  
  
But faced with Albus, or perhaps, as Severus hoped, remembering the note that had offered her some hope to save Potter, she backed down. She slumped back in her chair and only shook her head at Potter. “I wish the same thing,” she said hoarsely. “That I could have known you better. And that you could have known my boys.” She swallowed. “They were proud to die for the war. I was proud to let them.”  
  
 _And the truest sign of Albus’s blindness is how he accepts that,_ Severus thought, as Albus began a speech in praise of the Weasley twins. He seemed to have forgotten that this was a woman who would sacrifice anything for her children, who would have placed their lives before the whole world, and who had slaughtered two Death Eaters who had taken her daughter prisoner. She would have done the same thing to the twins’ captors if she could have reached them in time.  
  
 _Albus thinks everything is subordinate to his own vision. He can’t imagine someone not serving it unless they’re allied with the Dark Lord. Not now._  
  
But Severus saw the way Molly looked at the table instead of Albus even as she nodded along to his speech, and he smiled in the innermost secret places behind his Occlumency barriers. Yes, she was ripe for conversion.  
  
*  
  
“Severus?”  
  
The stunned whisper Molly uttered as Severus moved through the fire gratified him more than he cared to admit. As it was, he only inclined his head and drew the cloak from his shoulders, then turned to help with Potter’s. The more kind gestures he could make towards the boy, the more they stood a chance of convincing her. “Hello, Molly.”  
  
Potter took over from there, bar a slight shudder as Severus touched him. “Hello, Mrs. Weasley,” he said, and stepped forwards to take her hands between his, radiating charm. “I’m so happy you agreed to meet with me.”  
  
Molly left off staring at Severus to grasp Potter back, and then catch him in a hug that he bore gracefully. Severus watched their flame-bright hair mingle for a moment before he turned and cast the necessary spells that would tell him if there was anyone else in the house.  
  
 _No_. Of course, Molly’s youngest children were at Hogwarts, but her husband had spent much time with her since the loss of the twins. It appeared as if she had followed the instructions in Severus’s note to the letter, however.  
  
“I’ll do anything I can to save you,” Molly whispered, and stepped back to stand staring at Potter with eyes like stars. Severus had last seen those eyes when she was after the Death Eaters she’d killed. “Isn’t it bad enough that one mother died for you already, and you never got to know her?”  
  
Potter flushed a little. “I do have her memories, Mrs. Weasley.”  
  
“Call me Molly.” In short order, Molly had them both settled on either side of a polished wooden table, and biscuits full of sugar in front of them. Severus took one, although the sweetness crunched like sand between his teeth. “And it’s not the same. Never the same…” She paused and focused on the middle distance, then looked at Potter again. “Did Albus ever have any witch in to teach you or raise you?”  
  
Potter looked a little confused, but answered readily, “No, Mrs.—Molly. He thought he was enough of a dad for me.”  
  
Molly closed her eyes and swallowed enough breath for a burst of righteous wrath. Severus hid his smile behind a mask of grave attention and another biscuit. They had her now.  
  
“It’s  _exactly_ as I expected!” Molly exclaimed, slamming her hands down in the middle of the table. The plates and Potter both leaped. “That man never had children! And he never treated you like a child, either, dear,” she said to Potter. “Otherwise, how could he consent to sacrificing you?”  
  
Tears shone in her eyes. Potter took her hand and patted it a little, shooting Severus a look. Severus waited. Potter would have to do this by himself.   
  
 _Or perhaps not._ Molly was well on the way to joining their side, keeping the argument running against an invisible Dumbledore.  
  
“Why did he wait until you were seventeen to introduce you to us?” she demanded of Potter.  
  
“He thought it would be too dangerous—”  
  
“It was  _so_ he could present you as being of legal age and having the right to die if you wanted to!” Molly’s pointed finger nearly hit Potter in the nose. He moved a little back and looked at Severus. Severus silently shrugged and kept watching Molly. “So we would think of you as an adult, and not a child! A calculated, disgusting move!” She was huffing so hard that Severus wouldn’t have been surprised to see fire come out of her nose.  
  
Potter blinked, once, twice. Severus wondered if the boy was caught off-guard by the depth of Molly’s indignity, her way of expressing it, or something else. Severus  _had_ warned him what to expect.  
  
Then Potter smiled.  
  
His smile would have revealed too much to Molly had she not been caught up in ranting, and Severus nudged Potter in the side. Potter at once bowed his head and went back to playing the part they had agreed on, the sacrificial lamb who was astounded to have someone trying to lead him a different way.  
  
But the smile had revealed much to Severus, as well. Besides the burning desire to live, there was something in Potter that could take joy in other people fighting for him, and in  _manipulating_ them to do so. Even if they had been able to approach other members of the Order openly, Severus thought suddenly, Potter would not have wanted to. He would have preferred to do it like this.  
  
A sensation Severus found hard to describe unfolded in him. But if he had had to describe it, he would have said that his inner predator was stirring and sniffing the air.  
  
There was the scent of another like it, nearby.  
  
“…And that’s why he never introduced you to me,” Molly finally wound down. “He knows I wouldn’t  _stand_ for it.” She stood there fuming, her face blazing and her wand bouncing gently up and down in her palm. She didn’t seem to realize she’d drawn it.  
  
Potter cleared his throat when some moments had passed in silence. “You won’t stand for it? I mean, now? Not just that you wouldn’t if you’d met me when I was a boy?”  
  
He had the perfect eyes for this, Severus thought. Large enough not to need widening, and so bright and vivid they were hard to forget. He didn’t even think his own preference for Lily’s color was warping his judgment on this.  
  
“Of course I won’t,” Molly said, and turned to Severus. “Why did  _you_ decide to bring him here, Severus? Not that I’m not grateful, but I didn’t think you’d care whether James Potter’s son lived or died.”  
  
Severus tilted his head to the side so that his hair fell down in a sheer black curtain over his face. He had his own natural advantages, and he had had twice Potter’s lifetime to learn how they suited him. “But he is also Lily’s son. You forget.”  
  
Potter didn’t narrow his eyes at Severus or make any other motion of doubt. That was quietly pleasing, Severus decided. It meant he hadn’t decided that Severus was going back on his word and doing this to honor the “spirit” of Lily that lived inside him, instead of to help Potter himself live. Potter kept all his attention on Molly instead.  
  
“I did forget. I do forget.” Molly turned back to Potter with a stricken expression and came around the table to hug him. “Poor boy! You must be so tired of everyone reducing you to your parents.”  
  
“I  _am_ ,” Potter breathed.  
  
 _You’ve created a monster, Albus,_ Severus thought in some satisfaction.  _Or you would have if he’d decided that he wanted to rule or join the Dark Lord instead of simply live. With that will…_  
  
Severus regretted, with a force he rarely spent on trivial twists of fate, that Potter had not come to Hogwarts as a student. After all, he would probably have been Sorted into Slytherin, and Severus would spend more than a single moment getting to see the expression  _that_ would put on Albus’s face.  
  
“Now we have to decide how we’re going to do this.”  
  
Another nice point of plotting with Gryffindors, Severus decided, was that they would convince themselves and then get straight to the point, without demanding more explanations.  
  
He nodded. “I have some ideas.”  
  
*  
  
“I expected you to show more enthusiasm.”  
  
Severus could have called the words back as soon as he spoke them. He should not have let Potter’s grim, glazed eyes irritate him as they began to walk through the corridors of Hogwarts towards Severus’s quarters. They had agreed that, if Albus found them and needed a story, Severus would say that he had found the boy on his way to try and find a Horcrux, and had brought him back to scold him.  
  
“For the plan?” Potter shook himself like an otter. “Yes. I do. I have to admit that even if I die, it’s a less certain chance than it would be if I listened to Albus.”  
  
His voice was low. They weren’t passing any portraits at the moment—Severus had discreetly removed them from this section of corridors long ago—but Severus admired his caution.  
  
“Then?”  
  
Potter looked at Severus and frowned. “There’s something I’m trying to come to a decision on. It’s one of those tricky things where I don’t know how many of the emotions are my own and how much are gleaned from my mum’s memories.” He stopped and turned around to face Severus. “You were in love with her.”  
  
Severus crouched a little. “You  _dare_.”  
  
“It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. I know that from her memories.” Potter shrugged once, and then leaned in and said, “That’s why I don’t know the truth of what I’m feeling right now. Her emotions or mine? I don’t know.”  
  
“What emotions—”  
  
Severus was prepared for a punch or a curse. Perhaps Potter was reliving the moment when Severus had turned his back on Lily and felt ready to strike at him.  
  
He was not expecting a kiss.  
  
Potter leaned in and brushed his lips up and down across Severus’s, then from side to side. He did it all slowly and thoughtfully, as though he wanted to see what the taste of Severus’s mouth was more than anything else.  
  
Severus shoved him away a moment too late. There was no doubt what  _he_ was feeling. Shock.  
  
Potter nodded once, eyes on him, and said softly, “I thought so.” Then he turned and melted away up the corridor.  
  
Severus found his way into his own quarters and sat down on his favored chair in front of the fire, clearing his mind the way he would if he wished to practice Occlumency. He stared into the flames and concentrated on their patterns.  
  
He did not think.


	4. Flashes of Movement

Severus stepped into the Great Hall with his mind closed and locked and sealed in layers. He had placed Potter’s kiss, and Potter’s confessions, at the very bottom of his mind, and shut the doors on it. The information about his alliance with Potter and Molly was one layer above that. He would speak of it only to those who already knew of it.  
  
He knew he would manage to meet Potter’s eyes without blushing. He had been able to meet Lily’s even after that disastrous morning.  
  
But he could feel energies astir in the Great Hall that made his precautious meaningless. Albus stood at the Head Table, looking back and forth between the students. He had just shot a stream of blue and silver sparks from his wand into the air, and Severus heard the ringing echoes of stopped voices.  
  
“I know this is frightening,” Albus murmured. “Voldemort does not often move as openly as this.” He smiled at the nearest table, full of wide-eyed Hufflepuffs. “But I promise that I will personally track down your families and publish a list of the ones who have escaped to safety.”  
  
Severus reoriented his mind to wideness, crystal thinness, and openness. He would need to remember what was said around him today, in case he needed to repeat a detail later or use it in his bid to escape.  
  
Potter stood at Albus’s side, docile and sleepy, eyes half-closed. Only when he looked more closely did Severus see a dark mark on his cheek. His first, absurd thought was that Albus had discovered the boy’s treachery and used a Stinging Hex on him that had left a whip-like mark.  
  
A few seconds later, Severus realized the truth. It was black-brown dried blood, and it had run down from Potter’s scar.  
  
Severus insinuated himself along the side of the Great Hall as the room filled with subdued chatter again. He made his way to Albus’s side, and Albus smiled and nodded at him at once.  
  
“Ah, Severus. You sensed nothing last night?”  
  
Albus would never refer to Severus’s Dark Mark as such in public, but he still considered Severus a servant he could call upon. Severus subdued the instinctive urge to bristle and murmured, “No, I did not. What has happened?”  
  
Potter opened his eyes and replied in a voice that seemed to indicate he had no more personal connection to Severus than whatever his mother’s memories had forged for him. “Voldemort led a raid on the Ministry last night. He also unleashed his Death Eaters on all sorts of villages where Muggles live among wizards. There are fifty or sixty dead, at least.”  
  
Severus said nothing, but his mind blazed. For him to receive no word of such a major action meant, at the very least, that the Dark Lord suspected how closely Albus watched him. This was probably the beginning of the end.  
  
 _I will survive._  
  
Severus had always known he would, no matter who he had to betray. For one moment, though, a flicker of regret surfaced like a shining fin inside him, as he thought that he would probably have to betray Potter at the same time.  
  
Potter blinked guilelessly at him, as if he didn’t know Severus’s thoughts and would have no part in them even if he did, and then he turned and murmured to Albus. Albus’s eyes lit up, and he nodded a little, then motioned Potter aside. Potter followed him, and the whispering continued.  
  
Severus found it intolerable simply to stand there and wait for the conversation to be reported to him. It seemed the status quo had been restored. Potter was once again Albus’s obedient puppet, and Severus was discarded because he hadn’t reacted appropriately to Potter’s kiss.  
  
 _What would have been “appropriately?” For me to become Potter’s puppet in turn?_  
  
He had other things he could do, however, other things to focus on. Severus moved towards the Slytherin table and spent long minutes both spreading comforting lies and subtly probing for knowledge of the raid before it had happened, or smugness. He found terror in most and smugness in only two: Draco and, surprisingly, Pansy Parkinson. Her parents were less committed to the Dark Lord’s cause, or so Severus had always thought.  
  
The mystery was solved when he whispered a small spell that would let him see through cloth, and recognized the Dark Mark on Parkinson’s left arm. Severus stepped back with his head cocked.  
  
He hadn’t yet decided how he would use this new knowledge when a hand touched  _his_ sleeve. Severus turned, and found Potter standing at his side, looking at him with brilliantly flushed cheeks and eyes shining like stars.  
  
Severus might have flushed himself if he was less a master of Occlumency and his own emotions. As it was, he put his eyebrows up and waited while Potter drew him away from the Slytherin table and towards the far side of the Great Hall.  
  
“Headmaster Dumbledore and I have a plan to make sure that Voldemort is looking the other way when I take one of his Horcruxes,” Potter said. He ignored Severus’s flinch completely, much as Lily would have done. “We only need you to create a small distraction.”  
  
“That he did not summon me argues that he trusts me no longer,” Severus said. “I cannot be of use to you.” And because he had to, he added, “The  _two_ of you have a plan?”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter. He gave Severus a beaming smile that would do him no good with his suspiciously watching Slytherins, although the blackmail material he now had on two of them might give him an edge there. “It’s probably more like one and a half of us, but it could be two and a half if you join me in it.”  
  
“I told you why I could not be of use to you.”  
  
Potter snorted at him.  _Snorted_ at him. It had been years since even Albus had dared that, and Severus was opening his mouth to comment on this when Potter turned his head to the side and fixed him with one brilliant green eye.   
  
“I’m not asking you to go to him as a Death Eater and wave a shiny thing at him,” Potter said impatiently. “I’m asking for a potions accident in your class this morning. Something so spectacular that it’s going to provide a lot of news and put some students in the hospital wing and catch Voldemort’s attention, because he’ll think that it destroyed a potion you were making for  _him_.”  
  
“You ask me to subject myself to torture,” Severus whispered harshly. “You ask me to hurt my students.”  
  
“No,” said Potter. He sounded blank and bored, looking around as though he was contemplating the decoration of the school instead of the  _facts_ Severus was trying to give him. “The potion won’t hurt any students. I’ve already come up with a way to make sure it doesn’t. It’s a potion I’ve worked on for a while myself.”  
  
Severus seized his arm. Potter turned back to him with a flutter of his eyelashes. “ _Was_ there something?”  
  
“Don’t play with me,” Severus said, and relied on his Occlumency shields to hold himself close to Potter and suppress the impulse to flinch and back away. “You make it sound as though you are conspiring with Albus. You plan to give me a potion that I, as an expert brewer, should already have heard of. And there is still the chance of torture.”  
  
“I have that chance, too.” Potter didn’t flinch the way that so many members of the Order did when Severus reminded them of what he was risking. In fact, he looked _bored,_ although that was enough to make Severus ache with anger. “And this potion is something I started researching a few years ago. How should you have heard of it?”  
  
“Why are you conspiring with Albus?”  
  
“I’m not. No more than you’re conspiring with Voldemort.”  
  
“Will you  _stop saying the name_?”  
  
“No,” said Potter. “Not when it’s my life at stake, and you’re being far more ridiculous than I expected.” He reached out and plucked Severus’s fingers away from his robes with no effort.   
  
“Listen to me,” Potter said, his face and voice as unyielding as granite. “I am going to win my way free and survive no matter what happens. This potion is a way that will help me do it. It’s a contingency potion. I trust you’ve heard of them?”  
  
Severus was so deep in rage that he couldn’t speak. But Potter seemed to have known what he would have said, in itself a problem. He made a lazy gesture with one hand. “Yes, I know. They’re the stuff of mythology and children’s stories. Well, most people  _would_ think that who didn’t grow up with two sets of memories and the ability to conduct years of research because there was the memory of what the words meant in the back of their heads.”  
  
Severus’s breath grew short. Lily had been wonderful with Potions. She had never cared to make them a career, as Severus had, and had never made them her exclusive object of fascination. But the talent had been there.  
  
“I could read before I could get my mouth and tongue to function speaking,” Potter leaned forwards and studied Severus from as short a distance as he’d stood when kissing, not that Severus  _wished_ to remember that. “And there were concepts stirring in the back of my mind that I integrated into my consciousness before I understood what they meant. Certain things are instinctive to me because I never had a short attention span and I knew that they were possible before I set my mind to learning they weren’t. Do you understand now?”  
  
Severus said nothing. He only nodded, and waited.  
  
“There’s a potion that I came up with that could function on a contingency basis,” Potter said. “I didn’t make it myself only because I couldn’t gather enough ingredients with Albus watching me all the time, and it’s not like I had the ability to make long journeys outside the house. On one set of conditions becoming true, the potion kills the Horcrux in me and leaves Voldemort all the more mortal. But it leaves  _me_ alive.”  
  
Severus stared at him. He thought he could divine a few of the ingredients just by watching Potter’s face. But he wouldn’t give in and admit that that might make the position Potter was trying to pin him in more excusable. Instead, he muttered, “And what would the other set of conditions be?”  
  
Potter glanced at him. “It kills both the Horcrux and my mum’s memories.”  
  
Severus stood absolutely still. Then he shook his head. “On your own testimony, her memories are wrapped in yours. Her  _personality_ is wrapped in yours. It might not be the spirit the Headmaster thinks it is, but it is something deep. What would become of you if that part of her was destroyed?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Potter stiffened as though he’d heard a trumpet summoning him to battle.  _Perhaps he did,_ Severus thought, deciding that Potter must have at least some of the latent Gryffindor instincts of his parents. “But I want to find out. I’m not going to live as some being that’s half her for the rest of my life. I want to be more than just an urn for her ashes.”  
  
Severus huffed out a quiet breath. He would not have put it that way.  
  
But he was not Potter. And it seemed Potter had a thinking brain after all, despite his years of indoctrination under Albus and his actions last night.  
  
“What are you going to do?” Severus had to ask.  
  
“Get you the recipe for the potion, of course.” Potter’s words were extremely calm. “Some of the ingredients are ones would convince Voldemort you were brewing a potion for him, instead. Not one that he’d ordered you to, but one that he would be interested in.”  
  
Severus narrowed his eyes. “The Dark Lord takes no potion from my hand untested, and unless he’d ordered me to brew it, he wouldn’t be interested in it.”  
  
Potter grinned a little. “It’s not like you’d ever give it to him, so the question of him testing it won’t come up. And you don’t have to  _know_ that he would be interested in it. When the explosion comes and you have to make a report on it to him, then he could decide for himself he would have liked to see it. And become obsessed with it.”  
  
“What exactly would he think it could do for him?” Severus demanded.  
  
Potter smiled. “Oh. Because one of the ingredients is hair from a unicorn’s tail, and another is heartsblood hellebore, and another is the scrapings of a Chinese Fireball’s claws, he’s more than likely going to think that it was a potion that could have tamed dragons for him. He wants that, doesn’t he? Dragons to add to his armies?”  
  
Severus stared at Potter. Those were ingredients he would never have thought of combining himself, for a simple reason.  
  
“Not such a Potions expert after all, are you?” he demanded. He was aware that some people were beginning to turn and stare at them, but he needed to let Potter know why this wouldn’t work, remarks about contingency potions aside. “You know that Chinese Fireball claws and heartsblood hellebore explode on contact with each other.”  
  
“Not when the secret ingredient gets added to them,” Potter said, and had the audacity to smile at him.  
  
Severus took a step forwards and bent his head. Let his Slytherins wonder. “What would that be?” he hissed.  
  
“A drop of blood from my Horcrux scar.” Potter shrugged with one shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, but I did manage to get those particular ingredients from Dumbledore and try my blood on them. And the theory was right. It kept them from exploding.”  
  
Severus stared at him, then shook his head sharply. “Do you consider it advisable for me to pass this information along to the Dark Lord?”  
  
“I thought I would leave that up to you, as the experienced spy.” Potter grinned lazily at him and turned his back, moving towards the far side of the Great Hall. “Decide what you want to decide,” he called back to Severus.  
  
Severus could feel his mind racing through it as he stood there. Yes, heartsblood hellebore and Chinese Fireball claw scrapings,  _if_ they could be safely combined, could provide the base of a potion to tame dragons. Heartsblood hellebore was famed for its ability to make large creatures docile. It had never worked on dragons, but then, it traditionally had to be combined with the body parts of such creatures to tame them, and dragon body parts exploded on contact with it.   
  
Chinese Fireball claw scrapings…  
  
With a twist of his mind, Severus could see why Potter had decided through theory that that combination was the one most likely to prove successful, and then why he had thought to try blood from his scar.   
  
Present that information to the Dark Lord in the right manner, and he would be intrigued.  
  
And when he thought it all the way through and realized why Potter had thought he could engineer an explosion in his Potions lab, using a potion containing those ingredients, that would prevent any students from coming to harm, Severus had to close his eyes for a moment.  
  
Lily’s memories or not, he thought Potter’s cleverness was all his own, and he was grateful for the locked Occlumency shields that prevented any kind of inappropriate reaction on his part to that cleverness.  
  
*  
  
Severus placed the shreds of red hellebore, carefully draped in illusions that made them look like the far less common heartsblood hellebore, into the cauldron at the front of the classroom, and then turned around and scowled at the clumsy Gryffindor called Jordan Hammersmith, Longbottom’s heir in Severus’s ire. He was the safest target.  
  
“ _What_ are you doing, Hammersmith?” he demanded. “You are supposed to be creating a repellant that deters trolls, not an attractant that will bring them ravening to mate!”  
  
As Hammersmith flushed and the students roared with laughter—at least on the Slytherin side of the room—Severus flourished his wand and Switched the heartsblood hellebore in Hammersmith’s potion with the red hellebore in his own potion. His cauldron bubbled more fiercely. Hammersmith, making a mistake as always when he was flustered and nervous, seized the white sand they had to use and dashed it more fiercely than necessary into his own potion.  
  
The explosion that welled out of the cauldron was silent, and white as the sand. Severus cast the shields that the Dark Lord would expect when his little spies told him of it, and roared, “Down! Down,  _now_!”  
  
The students flung themselves to the floor, shrieking. Severus spun his wand counterclockwise, raising shield spells that looked impressive in their complexity and flexibility. In reality, they did nothing but heighten the effects of the actual potion fumes.  
  
Those fumes surged into the nostrils and faces of the children present, interacting with their teenage hormones and filling their minds with visions of horror. But the visions would blur in a few seconds and only make them languid and sick. No permanent physical harm would come to someone from breathing the smoke of red hellebore, or the white sand combined with it, sand where a unicorn’s shadow had passed.  
  
Severus began to snap biting remarks, as was his habit when such an explosion happened, but his mind was far away, coasting along roads of possibility. The Dark Lord might summon him. He might not. Draco, at least, was knowledgeable enough in Potions that he might simply report what had happened to the Dark Lord and earn that summons for Severus himself.  
  
But there was always the chance that he wouldn’t. So Severus began to pepper his mutters with small references to heartsblood hellebore and Chinese Fireball claws, and saw a few intelligent eyes open wide among his Slytherins.  
  
Severus’s mind swung back to possibilities at that. Potter had been able to predict it all, from the grossest ingredient reactions to how the Dark Lord would react and how the news would reach him.  
  
And that made Severus think of other things, other possibilities.  
  
*  
  
That night, when Potter rapped lightly on his door, Severus opened it and let him in without a word.  
  
Potter shook off the Invisibility Cloak that had protected him on his journey to the dungeons, and ignored the look Severus gave it. “Dumbledore’s put off the idea of having me gather the Horcruxes right away. He wants me to start next week.”  
  
Severus looked at him in silence, wondering if there had been an Order meeting as well as a Death Eater raid that he’d missed. But then again, Molly’s shrieking if Albus had spoken that way to Potter in her presence would have resounded throughout the castle, so Severus did not think so.  
  
Potter grinned unrepentantly at him. “Private conversation.”  
  
“Stupid boy.” Severus moved a few steps closer, and stopped, and watched, to see if Potter would react. But Potter only stood there with his hands shoved in his pockets, and whistled tunelessly. “Have you even  _once_ considered that this could result in your death?”  
  
“Of course it can,” Potter said. “But it’s still going to end my imprisonment. One way or another.”  
  
Severus moved another step closer. “You told me this morning that you would do anything to survive.”  
  
“And I mean that.” Potter’s eyes, wide and disingenuous and nothing like Lily’s, rose to his face. Lily had always been sincere, painfully so, in her smallest movements and gestures. There was nothing like that in Potter’s face. “But what I didn’t mean was that I thought everyone else would cooperate with me. Even though he talks like he wants you to do it, I still think Dumbledore might kill me himself in the end. If he thought there was no other way to get rid of the Horcrux, or he wanted to be sure.”  
  
Severus shook his head viciously. “I would not see you die.”  
  
“That’s comforting,” Potter said, and he smiled a little. “But keep in mind what I told you. I want to be  _rid_ of the memories my mum gave me, which are really the only part of her that survives. So if you help me live, you’re killing her.”  
  
Severus leaned in until he thought Potter would have to bend his neck back to look him in the face. But Potter didn’t bend, which ended with their chins almost resting on each other.  
  
It was not the position Severus had imagined for saying what he needed to say. But he gave a great huffing breath and said it anyway. “I did not mean that I would not see you die because of her. I would not see you die because—”  
  
The words paralyzed his tongue. In the end, they were too much to say, to  _speak_ , and to hope that Potter would accept it. Instead, he leaned forwards and returned the kiss.  
  
Potter didn’t flail about or make a squeaking noise or do anything else that would have satisfied Severus. He only leaned back against him, causing a brief painful clack of teeth, and returned the kiss with enough enthusiasm to make Severus’s head spin. Severus pulled away, choking and coughing, and heard Potter laugh in wild delight.  
  
Delight, not mockery. Severus didn’t even have to reassure himself of that, which stunned him. He raised his head and eyed Potter. Potter grinned back at him.  
  
“ _Good_ ,” Potter said. “But I do have to ask, why? I wanted to see what you would taste like and I was attracted to you for wanting to help me live and I think your Potions skills are great and I wanted to do something my mum never did. But you say that you don’t care about my mum dying with me. So, why for you?”  
  
Severus understood the question, and a slow smile crossed his lips. So Potter was not immune to the need for reassurance after all. He simply thought that Severus could be attracted to him solely because of the Lily in him, and no other reason.  
  
“I am—drawn by your cleverness, your ability to find solutions for the most intractable problems,” Severus admitted, straightening. “And I appreciate your—unique ways of applying those solutions.” He stood and held his hand out to Potter. “Shall that be enough for now?”  
  
“I think so,” Potter breathed, and kissed Severus again.  
  
Severus stumbled, holding him in his arms, and made it to the couch instead of sprawling on the floor. That was at least gratifying. But the way that Potter squirmed on top of him was not, and he said, “I am older than the age the Harry Potter part of you has lived, at least. Let us move to a more comfortable place.”  
  
Potter grinned at him and spun ahead of him into the bedroom, although Severus had not specifically invited him  _there_.  
  
But when Severus thought about it, he decided that, after all, he had little to complain about.


	5. Ill-Considered

Severus thought he would end up coming up behind Potter and stripping him of his robes. He thought he would kiss him, and Potter would submit. He thought he would hold him down and move inside him as commandingly as he had moved so far when it came to defying Albus and setting the path of his own fate.  
  
When he considered it later, he didn’t imagine how he had thought such plans would endure close contact with Potter’s particular brand of fire.   
  
He came up behind Potter, that much was true, and then Potter spun around and kissed him. Severus gasped, the sparks of their contact coming to life in his mouth like someone had thrust a firework down his throat, and then Potter’s hands and fingers were busy on his face, outlining the curves of his cheeks, forcing his head back.  
  
Severus was the one who fell on the bed, and the boy the one who came down to cover him.  
  
But Potter wasn’t a boy, as Severus was reminded this time by an energetic turn on top of him and a hiss into his ear. “When I first started dreaming of you as someone who might be able to free me, I didn’t know you would be this  _tall_. Are you always that tall?”  
  
Severus didn’t have his mouth free to answer in the next second, as it disappeared beneath another savage kiss, and then Potter squirmed around again and undid Severus’s belt buckle. His fingers flew, and Severus felt cloth being pushed aside and undone, and Potter’s mouth closed around him for one painful, blissful second.  
  
He tried to thrust up or seize Potter’s hair or otherwise take control of the situation, and Potter laughed soundlessly and rolled aside. Severus found his hand closing uselessly on air. Potter reared above him, balancing easily on his heels in a way that left him tantalizingly close to Severus but not actually touching him, and reached down to slide his own shirt over his head.  
  
“Watch and learn,” he whispered, and then tilted his head back. His red hair fell down, annoyingly straight, and Potter took out his wand and hissed a spell. His hair began to lengthen. Soon it was nearly down to the middle of his back. Severus didn’t see the utility of that until Potter dragged the hair over his bare cock.  
  
Then he very much did.  
  
It was a struggle with a whirlwind to get undressed, because half the time Potter wanted to help him out of his robes and half the time he wanted to pin Severus in place and laugh at him. At last, amid a fall of kisses and eager, scrambling fingers, Severus was naked, and Potter half-so. He still wore his shirt, and his eyes sparked as he sat back, seemingly daring Severus to risk taking more.  
  
Severus reached out and laid his hand on Potter’s chest, listening to the beat of Potter’s heart underneath his fingers. Potter was panting with excitement, and his lungs seemed to leap and throb against Severus’s palm.  
  
It was something he had come so close to never feeling. If Potter hadn’t survived, if Dumbledore hadn’t decided that he needed the Order’s help with the Horcruxes and killing Potter, if Potter had decided that he didn’t want to live or that his mother’s spirit was real and Dumbledore was only kind to him…  
  
Severus leaned up. Potter had stopped bouncing and was watching him with quiet eyes. Severus took his chin and kissed him.  
  
Potter seemed smart enough to know there was something different about this kiss, and he went with it, draping himself over Severus’s chest and flowing down like melting wax. His mouth was wholly delicious, wholly  _present_. Severus felt something turn over inside him, and didn’t even want to waste time on figuring out what it was. He pulled Harry down with him, down towards the bed, and spread his hands out.  
  
“Don’t move,” he whispered into Harry’s ear.  
  
Harry trembled with something that might have been laughter. Severus knew why. He was crouched over Severus, lying on his chest, with his hands on either side of Severus’s head. It would be hard for him not to move, at least if Severus was going to go anywhere.  
  
But in the meantime, Severus had reached out and worked a strand of Harry’s bright red hair loose from his head. Harry winced as he plucked it, but said nothing. Severus braided it around his fingers, then cast a spell on it that he’d picked up from reading some of the stranger books in Lucius’s library.  
  
The hair at once pulled taut and quivering, and Harry did the same thing, a muffled exclamation leaving his throat.  
  
“Yes,” Severus whispered back to him, and then played the hair as if it was a grass whistle, pulling it, flexing it, blowing on it. Every time he did that, Harry trembled with the sensation of phantom fingers and breath working on him. He was panting so hard by now that Severus would have been concerned for his health if he didn’t know that Harry was tougher than that, to have survived what he’d survived.  
  
Besides, it made him look delicious enough that Severus couldn’t stand simply tormenting the  _hair_. He laid it aside on the pillow and took Harry’s head between his hands, kissing him savagely.  
  
Harry returned at once to the kiss, and Severus thought about renewing his command not to move. But he couldn’t stand to, not when Harry was twisting above him like an eager dolphin and Severus’s hands had finally slipped beneath the last cloth Harry wore.  
  
Harry felt  _sleek_ where Severus touched him, as though he had never been scarred, although Severus knew that was false. He bit-kissed Harry’s lips again, and murmured, “Sit back and take our clothes off.”  
  
Harry did it, although the wild gladness in his eyes made it seem as if he wasn’t really obeying an order. Severus felt his neck arch. He didn’t want Harry to obey his orders, no. It would have seemed wrong if someone so free did it.  
  
 _If Lily did it?_  
  
Severus dismissed that thought. Harry was not Lily, and even with his red hair long and tangling around him, he was not like her. Severus found it hard to imagine why Dumbledore and the rest thought Harry was actually possessed by his mother’s spirit. When you  _looked_ at Harry’s face, it was very different.  
  
Harry finally finished getting them naked and lay back down on top of Severus. Severus found himself gasping as he raked his fingers up and down Harry’s sides. No, there were no scars there, though there might be a few birthmarks. Harry was all lithe and twisting muscle, not soft, but unmarked by the world.  
  
How Severus was going to enjoy giving him a few marks to react to!  
  
Harry sat back with a heavy look in his eyes, and Severus promptly bit his mouth again. Then he said, “You know the way of things between two men?”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “That was one of the things I read up on. You can imagine how bored I got, reading about sex that I didn’t think I’d ever get to have.” He tossed Severus a look that made Severus’s chest feel as if it was on fire, and then he picked up his wand and murmured something.  
  
To Severus’s confusion, no oil or unguent appeared in Harry’s hand. He glanced at him, and Harry winked and said, “It’s on here.” He held up his gleaming wand, balanced himself carefully with one hand on Severus’s shoulder, and then eased the wand behind him and  _into_ himself.   
  
Severus could have fainted then. He didn’t, but the dark, distant buzzing in his head made him feel as if he was on the verge of it, and he had to watch motionless as Harry began to fuck himself steadily with his wand.   
  
“Yeah—right—there,” Harry said, spacing his words out as though he assumed he was going to suffer if he didn’t. “ _Yeah_.” He moaned as the wand slid in deeply, and Severus rolled him gently to the side so that he knelt now on the bed, because he couldn’t stand not being allowed to watch anymore.  
  
Harry clenched his hand on the sheets and thrust the wand in even harder from his new angle. Severus swallowed. It felt as though he had eaten half the horrible essays that he was forced to mark every day. “Doesn’t that hurt?” he whispered.  
  
“Oh,” said Harry, opening glazed eyes and turning his head so he could lock gazes with Severus. “Yeah, it does. But that only makes it better, you know?” And he closed his eyes and thrust home again.  
  
Severus performed the spell that would give him his own handful of lube without taking his gaze from Harry’s hole and pumping wand. There was so much thickness in his throat that he didn’t think he could speak around it. And maybe he didn’t have to. Not when Harry was lying here and giving himself over fully to Severus, spreading his legs and humping around his wand.  
  
Severus knew Harry was probably a virgin. Like he said, what chances would he have had to escape from Albus’s strict watch? But he was eager to give it up, from the way he rolled and hissed on his wand.  
  
And the way that he immediately settled backwards when Severus reached for him, slick hands on his hips. Harry rolled his hips without pause, sitting on Severus’s cock with a small moan and grunt. Severus had to pull back to readjust himself a few times, but it was still—  
  
 _Overwhelming_.  
  
Severus thought he would succumb to the pleasure after an embarrassingly short time, and he grabbed Harry’s shoulder savagely to calm himself down. Harry turned his head and gave him a smile that gleamed as if under moonlight.  
  
“It’s all right,” he said. “Everything you can do to me reminds me that I’m still alive.”  
  
It was as close to permission as Severus needed or was ever likely to get. He leaned forwards and laid his jaw on Harry’s shoulder, then dug his nails in. Harry only shuddered and tilted his head back further, rocking fervently, as if he wanted to help Severus grind all the way through him and into the center of his body.  
  
Severus was willing to try. He was  _hot_ , and the only thing that felt as if it could relieve him was driving into Harry. He did it again, and again, and again. And then Harry reached back and began to “help” by positioning  _himself_ so that he was fucking Severus with his arse and his back.   
  
They twisted and wrestled back and forth, sometimes sitting up with Harry in Severus’s lap, sometimes sprawled more on their sides, and sometimes in the middle of positions passing through one of those things that Severus couldn’t really define. What he knew was that the heat and the pace had both increased, and he couldn’t stop panting, couldn’t stop thinking about how much he was enjoying this.   
  
Now and then a thought that had the name  _Lily_ in it would flash through his head. But it never stayed.  
  
Now he was up on his knees with Harry bent on his knees before him, clutching the headboard and snarling incoherent things at Severus over his shoulder. Severus paused, mastering his own restless desire to thrust wildly, and then began making short, controlled motions into Harry. Predictably, Harry swung around, clawing for him as if he wanted to slice Severus’s throat open.  
  
“No, wait, feel,” said Severus, and steered Harry back to the headboard, slamming his hands into place, before he continued. The lingering torment of his own slowness, the fact that he wanted to do so many things to Harry and was forcing himself not to, only made the heat blaze further and faster beneath his skin.  
  
Harry did it, although the way his muscles were quivering, he was dying to go ahead and speed things up. Severus rode him gently, with his hand splayed out on Harry’s chest. He could feel his skin that way, and the small stirring, standing hairs, and how his lungs and his heart worked.  
  
He could feel Harry in so many ways, surrounding him, on top of him, listening to him, that coming was almost an afterthought. He only knew that suddenly his thrusts had sped up again, without any planning on his own part at all, and then he was freefalling through pleasure and into sweaty darkness.   
  
Severus gave a swift gasp and opened his eyes.  
  
Harry was still kneeling on the bed in front of him, his head hanging a little. For a moment, Severus thought he had committed the gaffe of coming without making sure his partner did, and then he saw the way Harry’s neck curved and the wetness on the bed in front of him. Severus relaxed and rolled to the side, gathering Harry to him.  
  
The enchantment that made Harry’s hair longer and so much like Lily’s had faded. Severus combed his fingers through the redness of it and watched it in silent, secret wonder. He wondered what would happen to it, and the color of Harry’s eyes, and the shape of his face, if he succeeded in his plot to destroy the memories of Lily that lingered in his mind.  
  
 _Would it matter?_  
  
No, Severus decided slowly. He might have been attracted to Harry in the first place because of how much he looked like Lily, but the way he spoke, moved, felt, tasted, and leaped into sex was all different from how Severus had known Lily (or imagined Lily).  
  
This would never be true love in the way that Severus had once thought he would have with his best friend. But it wouldn’t be simply useless or dangerous or baseless, either. He could splay his hands out on Harry’s belly and face and move them back and forth, fingers digging in, and feel him quiver, and know that he was holding the living in his hands.  
  
And the living must always triumph over the dead.  
  
Severus dropped off to sleep without the wish to dream of Lily that he had had every night for the past sixteen years. It was something.  
  
*  
  
“How curious, Severus.”  
  
The Dark Lord’s voice was a chill that curled and cooled around Severus’s heart. He wouldn’t have been surprised to stand up with a lump of ice in his chest, but he had never done so yet. He simply reinforced his Occlumency shields and replied as calmly as he could.  
  
“Yes, my Lord. I had thought that I had perfected the potion and therefore it would not explode, but I had not.” Severus grimaced. “It seems that the ingredient I had thought incidental to the potion was necessary after all.”  
  
“Tell me what ingredient that is,” the Dark Lord purred, leaning closer. “Tell me what it is meant to do.”  
  
“A drop of blood from the scar on the Potter boy’s head,” Severus said, and shook his head. “Albus had put him to brewing potions with me as a punishment—for one or the both of us I do not know. The boy wounded himself, because  _of course_ he did.” It required no effort to summon up a sneer, because in general Severus thought Albus’s raising of Harry left much to be desired. “Raising a naïve weapon does not make the weapon good at Potions.”  
  
“And then?” The Dark Lord was almost swaying in his seat now, the motion echoed by Nagini swaying at one side of the throne.  
  
“The blood fell into the potion,” said Severus. “I thought it would explode, of course, because the boy had already insisted on adding Chinese Fireball claw scrapings. He had ‘read something in a book’ that told him they would make a good potion, apparently.” Severus had become adept at conveying his scorn for idiotic Potions knowledge without rolling his eyes. “But the potion stabilized. I was convinced it was something other than the blood, that the blood was a coincidence.”  
  
“It is not,” said the Dark Lord, and his fingers had curled over the arms of his chair. He had new additions to them now, Severus saw. Claws, which sparkled in the light and made the tapping noise like small sickles.  
  
“No,” Severus admitted. “And it is a potion that might domesticate dragons, my Lord.” He lowered his voice and looked around as if afraid that someone other than Nagini might overhear them, although he knew there were no other Death Eaters near the Dark Lord right now. “But I could not be sure until now, and I did not wish to present you with a potion that did not work.”  
  
“ _Wise_ of you, Severus,” the Dark Lord said, with such light glinting from his mouth that Severus was sure he had also done something to his teeth. “I wish others of my servants were as wise.” He pondered a moment, his claws lightly scraping and dancing along the throne, while Severus sat as still as he could and tried to make it look like his eyes were respectfully lowered.   
  
“Stay close to the boy,” the Dark Lord said at last. “Let him think that he has done nothing remarkable, but prepare yourself for the moment when we might need to collect more of his blood.” He chuckled softly. “Who would have known that it was with the addition of something of  _mine_ that the boy would become remarkable?”  
  
“Only those who saw past the mystique cloaking his parents, my Lord,” Severus said at once. “Most would think that the son of Lily Evans and  _James Potter_ could not help but be remarkable.”  
  
More of an effort to add the sneer to his voice as normal, even though so little had changed. He was glad that this was likely to end with either the death of the Dark Lord or Severus’s own flight from the war. The addition of Harry to his life meant he could not be as flawless a spy any longer.  
  
Well-aware of Severus’s feelings towards both Lily and James, the Dark Lord only laughed again in delighted response and reached out to lay his hand on Severus’s forehead. Severus held still as he felt those claws come close to scraping bone. “Heed my directives. Obey only me.”  
  
With most Death Eaters, those words would have had the force of compulsion, but Severus had the habit of long years of training and an iron will to knock them down. He held still and only shuddered in the innermost parts of his soul where the Dark Lord could not see.  
  
He would survive. And Harry would. That was no longer in doubt.  
  
*  
  
“We will retrieve the first of the Horcruxes this evening.”  
  
Albus’s calm announcement had taken the Order by surprise. But Severus was glad that at least one of them immediately spoke up.  
  
“And what kind of danger to Harry would that involve?” Molly Weasley demanded, her eyes snapping such fire that Albus turned to her in astonishment. “Broken limbs? Torture and capture? Something else?”  
  
Albus started and looked at her in a way that made Severus think he had never prepared for any opposition from that quarter.  _Foolish_. If Severus and Harry had not gone to her, Molly would probably have come up, on her own, with the notion that it was repugnant for a child to be sacrificed to the war.  
  
“I saw my sons die.” Molly was choking, but she stood up and faced Albus with tearless eyes. “I saw Fred and George standing in front of six Death Eaters, the way—the way my brothers did.” Now there was a gleam of tears at the edge of her eyes, but her voice still went on, strong and pitiless. “And I saw them turned into shreds of skin and blood and ash. I won’t let you sacrifice someone else their age, Albus, someone who’s barely begun to live. Not again.”  
  
“But he has lived, Molly.” Albus’s voice was so soft, almost sweet, the voice of someone who had reasonable arguments and was being confronted by unreasonable emotion. Severus saw him reach a hand out, then pull it back with a little frown. He seemed to be watching Molly closely for the signs of some spell or condition. “He’s lived twice as long as it seems, since he has the experience of his mother’s life in his head as well.”  
  
Harry lifted his head abruptly and studied a brick in the wall. Severus almost snorted. Someone else would take it as an attempt to nobly remove himself from the situation. Severus was the one who saw the tension in that curved and arched neck, behind those green eyes.  
  
Well, perhaps not the only one. Granger said abruptly, “Does Harry really have to  _die_ , Headmaster?”  
  
“I’m afraid so, my dear child,” said Albus, and turned and smiled mistily at her. “There is no other way to destroy the Horcrux.”  
  
“How much have you researched that?” Molly demanded. “And are you  _sure_? Because if there’s a chance we could save him and we let him die anyway, we’re really no better than the Death Eaters.”  
  
Severus concealed a chuckle. If he had said something like that, the bolt would not have gone home. But it seemed it was unexpected enough from Molly’s mouth to make the other Order members look uneasy.  
  
“Molly’s right about that, Albus,” said Arthur at last, and reached out to put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “We’ve got to make sure that we’ve explored all the other options.”  
  
“Of course I have,” said Albus, and his eyes drifted back and forth over them and his voice became moving, the magnificent voice Severus had so often heard when he wanted to impress the other Order members or win them over. “Do you think I would have done  _this_ if anything else had occurred to me? Do you think I didn’t spend hours in research, trying to find some other way than what my instincts told me would happen? I  _rebelled_ against those instincts. I did all I could. I would have summoned any of you to my side in an instant if I thought you would tell me something else.”  
  
Arthur hesitated, but Molly looked as unmoved as Harry. Severus did take a moment to wonder how Harry had stood it by himself for so long, with no allies and that voice pouring honeyed words into his ears.  
  
 _Perhaps it was simply the survival instinct, that wish not to die._  
  
Severus didn’t think it was only that, of course. Someone whom he chose to take to his bed would be more remarkable than that, with the same sort of cleverness that Harry had already demonstrated about Potions. But he needed to sound convincing if someone asked him a point-blank question about his connection to Harry and he had to deny it. It couldn’t hurt to practice.  
  
“And of course,” Albus continued, “Lily Potter was willing to sacrifice herself for her son. If she is willing to do it again, if we can draw out the Horcrux and use her death to destroy it, then I will do it in a heartbeat.”  
  
 _Her sacrifice has to be willing, but Harry’s doesn’t have to be?_ Severus caught Harry’s eye, and understood in a second another reason that Harry had decided to rebel. Being told, day in and day out, that it was only his mother’s memories that made him special, not that there was any intrinsic worth or value to his own life, would probably alter his perceptions quickly.  
  
Arthur settled back, and Molly frowned. “I want to know what kind of magical theory you came up with to make this work, Albus. I hate to think that  _anyone_ else is going to die in pursuit of this strange goal.”  
  
And as Albus spoke, although Severus saw little chance that he would convert Molly, Severus kept an eye on Harry. He was standing as poised as a great stag, perhaps as calm if you only saw him from the outside, and didn’t realize those eyes were as cold and hard as green marble.  
  
 _To be raised among justifications and hopes and someone trying to turn you into a symbol might be worse than being raised around lies about getting to survive…_  
  
Even if Molly was converted, even if they could not fool the Dark Lord, even if he stood alone, Severus realized, Harry Potter was not going to lie down on the altar and bare his throat to sacrificial knife.  
  
And Severus would stand behind him.


	6. Houses of Darkness

“You’ll need to keep behind me as we go in.”  
  
Severus bristled. He didn’t say anything about his anger right away, because they were picking their way through a bristling maze of spells that would lash out at them if they made too many sounds.  
  
Harry could see the spells perfectly, he had claimed, while Severus could only see them out of the corner of his eye, as a flicker and dance of light that resembled Muggle wire fences. But it was simple enough to follow Harry. Severus only needed to walk where he walked, step where he stepped.  
  
For eighty or so steps, that was what he did. Then they came out on a faint path that led around a mighty tree. Severus looked in silence at the dusty green leaves on the tree and shook his wand into his hand. He could feel the stiff thrum of wards surely as well as Harry could.  
  
Harry stood still, turning his head from side to side. His hands rested on the air for a second, bouncing as though testing the strength of yet another fence. Then he nodded and drew his wand. “We can talk now,” he murmured.  
  
“Thank Merlin,” Severus snapped. Harry chuckled without looking at him, and began to pick his way through a stand of nettles. “Where are we going?”  
  
“This is the place that Voldemort’s family used to live,” Harry explained.  
  
Or didn’t explain. Severus caught up with him and murmured, “That does not tell me  _where_.”  
  
“Near the village of Little Hangleton,” said Harry. “His mother’s family, the Gaunts, lived in a wretched little shack we’ll visit now. His father’s family, the Riddles, lived in a house on the hill.” He nodded upwards, and Severus looked instinctively, but he couldn’t see anything. More trees and the mounds that made up the side of the hill blocked his view. “The house is almost abandoned now. Voldemort came back when he was a teenager and killed his father and grandparents.”  
  
Severus felt as though Nagini was crawling up his spine. “And the shack?” he demanded, catching up to Harry. “I suppose the hiding place of one of  _his_ Horcruxes will be abandoned, and we can simply walk in?”  
  
“It’s not undefended. But it is abandoned, yes.”  
  
Severus spent some time glaring at the back of Harry’s head for his distinction between those particular terms. Harry didn’t seem to notice. He was bending down to examine each meter of space in front of them, and his wand would regularly sweep to the side as he murmured charms or countercurses. Half the time, Severus knew there had been magic there only when he saw a puff of red or green smoke rise up from an ordinary-looking stone or clump of thorns.  
  
“Is this what you trained for?” he asked, when they had paused so that Harry could work on an apparently difficult knot of charms around a stone. He added internally, _And if Albus could train you to do this, why couldn’t he do it himself?_  
  
Harry gave him a quick smile over his shoulder. He seemed to have gone beyond what Severus had thought he would, into a world where he was a predator. His gestures were shorter than before, he rose more on the balls of his feet, and he turned around as if he could see through the trees into what they sheltered. Severus watched him and thought that he had never seen him look so alive.  
  
“Not specifically for this. How could we know all the details about the places that he hid the Horcruxes? But for a lot of similar things.”  
  
And then Harry abruptly spun around and threw his arm out in front of him, and Severus halted at the same time and stopped breathing. Harry cocked his head with exquisite slowness to the side. Severus became aware of how furiously his own heart was drumming, and wished there was a way to slow it down without damaging it.  
  
“Now,” Harry said, in a soft, sleepy voice.  
  
There was a blaze and a shimmer in the air around Severus, and he leaped back, swearing. Then he leaped forwards again, because that shimmer had coalesced into a pack of lean, angular wolves around Harry, and he was fighting.  
  
 _At least they aren’t werewolves._ But they were furiously quick, and there were long strands of hair around their paws that seemed to leap up and tangle around each other in the air like tentacles. One of them landed on Harry’s arm, and he grimaced in pain.  
  
But he didn’t slow down and stop swinging his wand. The magic that leaped out and fried one of the wolves was a spell Severus was utterly unfamiliar with. Harry fought without sound, ducking beneath a pair of snapping jaws, rolling under a wolf’s belly and gutting it, jabbing a punch into furry ribs that broke some of them, from the noise. That wolf gave a yelp like a drowning sailor’s cry and whirled.  
  
Severus had finally come close enough to help. The wolf slammed into a cage that Severus conjured around it. Then Severus swirled his wand, and the cage grew smaller and smaller and crushed the wolf into bloody pulp.  
  
By the time he turned around, the other members of the pack were dead. Harry stood up and shook blood from his arm. He examined the wound from the tentacle with his head still cocked on one head, but grunted dismissively when Severus reached for it.  
  
“It’s nothing important,” he said.  
  
“You will allow me to be the judge of that.”  
  
Harry looked up once, then smiled a little. “If you want to.” He tilted his arm so Severus could make out the wound.  
  
It looked like the row of grasping suckers Severus would have expected to see from a venomous sea-creature. He grimaced and hissed under his breath. Harry watched him with a tolerant expression that was very annoying.  
  
“Do you know if this is poisonous?” Severus asked. He cast a charm of his own that should tell him, but it faded out into an inconclusive little puff of green smoke. Probably because the wolves were conjured creatures instead of natural ones.  
  
“I don’t think so,” said Harry, shaking his head. “Albus had me work with some of the venoms that Voldemort liked to use during the first war. Almost all of them came from snakes. I would recognize the symptoms of them.”  
  
Severus went still. Then he forced himself to unlimber his arms and put his wand away. “Because you took them.”  
  
“That was part of the training, yes.” Harry looked him in the eye, then away. “Albus thought I should know the touch of death as well as life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t properly understand the sacrifice demanded of me.” He rubbed one hand on Severus’s shoulder for a second, as if he was trying to soothe a growling dog. “Shall we go?”  
  
He moved down the side of the hill, with Severus coming behind him, glance devouring him. It was no wonder that Harry fought like a hardened soldier and seized lovemaking and sleep and the chance to survive like someone who had been through a war. His upbringing had been that way.  
  
 _When did Albus change that much?_  
  
But he had had charge of Harry for sixteen years. And Severus had experienced the way that Albus could detach himself from a situation when he decided that he couldn’t help someone any more than he already had. He had done that with Severus when he told him that he could get him a pardon for his Death Eater activities, but not permission to leave the country. He was sorry for Severus, but he wouldn’t spend more time worrying about it.  
  
 _At least I was an adult. At least I’d had the chance to commit my own crimes and taste the pleasures of Death Eater life, few though they might have been._  
  
*  
  
Harry stepped back from the small circle he’d drawn in the dirt on the floor of the shack, and shook his hand as though it hurt, although as far as Severus could see, all his _hand_ had done was hold his wand as he drew the circle and cast the spell. “There.”  
  
Severus craned forwards. In the center of the circle lay the ring that Harry said was the Horcrux they’d come to fetch. Harry had concocted a simple bracelet of his own hair and smeared it with a drop of his blood and some green liquid from the wound on his arm. Severus had stood up when that liquid came flowing out, but Harry had turned and looked at him.  
  
Severus could read that look— _what are you going to do about it here, when you’re far from your lab and potions?—_ and he reluctantly stood down again.  
  
But now he could ask. “You did the ritual to prevent the Dark Lord from finding out that you’d removed a Horcrux?”  
  
“Yes.” Harry nodded and stepped back from the circle, casting a few more spells. One of them banished the circle altogether; the other sent the bracelet of blood and hair and pus whizzing into the tiny metal box that had contained the ring. “Come on, we need to get back to Hogwarts as soon as we can. Severus?”  
  
Severus found himself staring at the ring Harry had levitated into the air. There was no good reason to touch it, Harry had said.  
  
But the ring had a grey stone in it that shone like oil, and kept drawing Severus’s eye.  
  
“What is that?” Severus whispered. “I never felt drawn to the Horcrux inside you like that…unless I have, and that is why I find you attractive…” He tried to look at the scar on Harry’s forehead and see if it affected him the same way, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the stone.  
  
“The stone is something else,” said Harry sharply. At least, Severus  _thought_ his voice was sharp. It was hard to be sure behind the dim, muffling waves that seemed to beat on his ears. Had they Apparated to the sea and he hadn’t noticed? “Not a Horcrux. It feels like—”  
  
An explosion abruptly shook the earth around Severus, and he found himself lying on his side, panting, his gaze disconnected so hard from the stone that it felt as though someone had snapped him free of a splint. He grimaced and lifted a hand to touch his head. Yes, he knew now that he had been behaving unnaturally, but he couldn’t remember what natural behavior  _would_ feel like.  
  
“It’s all right,” said Harry, low and close in his ear, one hand gripping his side above the ribs. Severus concentrated for a second on the sight of the puckered wound on Harry’s arm, and used it to keep himself grounded. “I had to use a sudden spell to tear you free of the fascination. The explosion was mental. Can you sit up?”  
  
Severus grimaced, nodded, and did so. He tried to make sure that he kept his face turned away from the stone in Harry’s ring—no, the Dark Lord’s ring. He had to shudder a little as he did it. What kind of artifact was powerful enough to batter down his Occlumency shields and take control of him like that?  
  
“I’m not sure why it’s affecting you so much more powerfully than it is me,” said Harry in a doubtful tone. “Maybe the Horcrux in my scar protects me against it somehow, I don’t know. In the meantime, we need to get back. I can’t be sure that the Dark Lord might not send Death Eaters after me if he knows I’m out of Hogwarts.” He touched Severus one more time, then withdrew. “Can you stand?”  
  
Severus could, although he knew it was pride more than physical strength aiding him. Harry had sealed the Horcrux away in a box that was meant to transport it, but Severus avoided looking even at that, glancing at the wound Harry bore instead. “You will allow me to cleanse that as soon as we get back to Hogwarts.”  
  
“I think Dumbledore will want us to report to him first…”  
  
“You will allow it, or I will resist the Apparition.”  
  
Harry stared at him. This time, Severus saw no trace of Lily in the green eyes that looked at him. “What? Do you mean that you’d Splinch yourself for that?”  
  
“You are worth a Splinching.”  
  
And that made Harry grin, even if he turned his head away to try and hide the expression. Severus gave his own thin smile. The more Harry felt as if he had a reason to try and live, the stronger his resistance to Dumbledore would be.  
  
Severus wished to be free of both his masters. He had never entertained that hope, knowing how fragile even the hope that he could be free of  _one_ necessarily was.  
  
But Harry encouraged him to dare the pain, to fix his eyes on Harry’s back as they strode along the path that led out of here and Harry cleft some more traps with a whisking pass of his wand. Harry was a symbol of hope for Severus in a way that Albus had never intended.  
  
It was—a good thing, in a world where Severus had almost forgotten that those existed.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t think there is any remaining infection.”  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said, as Severus tied off the bandage that surrounded the puckered mark. He was already looking away from Severus, though, towards the box that contained the ring. “Now. I want to try something before Dumbledore gets hold of the box and me. But I think I need you to go into another room.”  
  
Severus stared at him. He waited for Harry to look up, meet his eyes, and understand how outrageous his request was, but Harry didn’t; he was turning the box over in his hands now, as though the riddle was how to open it instead of how to destroy the Horcrux and survive the destruction of his own. “Why?” Severus asked finally.  
  
Harry glanced at him, but it was only a passing, melting look, and one that Severus wanted to make him repeat. “Because the stone affected you so badly last time. Until we know why, I think it’s best to keep you far away from its influence.”  
  
“And your life and sanity, of course, are worthless.”  
  
“I didn’t say they were. Just that my freedom is worth more to me than they are, and I’m willing to take risks to get that freedom back. You shouldn’t have to take the same risks.” Harry glanced at him again.  
  
Severus seized his chin and held his face still. “You would send me out of the room to  _protect_ me?”  
  
“Yes. Why are you staring at me like that? It isn’t like this is some great secret of the universe or hard to understand.” Harry adopted a sudden look of enlightenment. “Oh, wait, do you think it’ll take too long and we have to report to Albus soon? Don’t worry. I’ll tell him that I was experimenting a bit with the Horcrux to figure out how to destroy it. He’ll believe anything I tell him about that.”  
  
Severus stared at him some more, and then let Harry’s chin go and turned to enter the bedroom. “I will be here when you are done,” he said over his shoulder.  
  
He didn’t know that he could tell Harry what being protected meant to him, because frankly he didn’t know himself.   
  
*  
  
“We have the first Horcrux.” Harry set the ring down in the middle of the table. Severus saw the way the Order’s eyes fixed on it, but none of them were caught as his had been. Of course, Harry had prudently removed that stone before he showed the ring to anyone else. “We can start setting the first trap for Voldemort.”  
  
There was a rustle of commentary among the Order, including some words from Granger that wouldn’t have been worth listening to even if Severus could have heard them clearly. He reserved his eyes and ears for Albus, though, who leaned close to Harry and asked, “Do you not mean the  _final_ trap, dear Harry?”  
  
“That is what I meant,” Harry said, glancing at him with a puzzled expression. “The first part of the final trap.”  
  
“Ah.” Albus settled back in his chair. “You left the word ‘part’ out of your sentence. I wondered if you had decided to change your plan without telling me.”  
  
His eyes were sharp enough that Severus felt a sharp drop in his stomach, before he shook the delusion out of his head.  _Yes, he might know, that’s true, but it’s equally likely that he’s jumping on small “clues” in hopes that he can trick something out of Harry. We can’t let our paranoia rule us._  
  
“It looks like there was supposed to be a stone on the ring,” Granger remarked, leaning forwards. “Did you take it out, Harry?”  
  
 _She addresses him so easily by his first name, when she is also willing to condemn him to death,_ Severus thought, staring at the far wall over Granger’s head.  _I wonder if her trust in Albus is as blind as all that, or if she simply doesn’t allow herself to grasp the implications?_  
  
“The ring was like that when I found it,” Harry said, and winced and rubbed the side of his arm that held the wound Severus had treated. “I thought the same thing you did, though, and I touched it carelessly, without looking with magic. There was a trap there instead.”  
  
“Ouch,” said Granger, but since she didn’t look up from the ring, Severus didn’t think much of her supposed empathy.  
  
“Are you all right, my boy?” Albus asked Harry then, and Harry nodded to him with a little smile.  
  
 _Such concern for the physical health of the Horcrux you are going to kill._ Then again, for all Severus knew, Harry did have to be in good physical health if the ritual to destroy the Dark Lord was going to work.  
  
“Good,” Albus said, and then leaned nearer. Only because he was watching with all the desperation he needed to conceal did Severus make out what he said next. “Could I talk to Lily for a moment?”  
  
Harry blinked for what seemed to Severus an extraordinarily long time, and then his head drooped abruptly forwards and his breathing became more like snoring. The other Order members were discussing the ring, or maybe just thought that Albus needing to have a private conversation with Harry was normal. Severus continued to stare forwards. Albus had put up no spells against eavesdropping, and Severus could hear more than well enough.  
  
“Good. Lily,” said Albus. “I know you don’t like using spells that are close to Dark. But Harry is too young to have the magical strength to use the Lighter ones, and he might not have the time to memorize the ritual. Will you lend him  _your_ magical strength for the Dark spells and your memory for the ritual?”  
  
 _He really does think there’s some of her spirit surviving in Harry._ The hardest thing Severus had ever done was keep his eyes facing forwards and his tongue still.  _And that she’s a separate person he can ask things of._  
  
Severus did jump when a soft, feminine voice began to speak from Harry’s lips. “Yes. Albus. Although…are you certain this is necessary? Did I fight so hard for my son only to have him die after all?”  
  
Severus breathed carefully. He would have thought that Harry had been wrong or lying after all, in his desperate attempt to find help, and Lily was still alive, except for one thing.  
  
He had revisited his Pensieve memories again and again throughout the last sixteen years, spending time with every shred of Lily he could find. He knew her voice as he knew no one else’s. The voice coming from Harry’s lips was not hers.  
  
“Ah, Lily.” Albus put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and Severus felt himself shiver, once. He was  _sure,_ in Albus’s mind, that the person he was touching was older, more battle-hardened, with hair an even brighter red. “Your concern for your son does you credit. But thanks you to, he  _did_ live sixteen extra years. That will have to be enough.”  
  
Severus turned his head then. He didn’t think Albus would notice, but truthfully, that wasn’t his motivation for not keeping still. He simply couldn’t stand there and not look for some sign that Harry realized how strange this was, that he wasn’t the mindless servant Albus counted on.  
  
And he saw it. Harry’s nostrils flared a little before he used his fake voice to say, “I understand, Albus.”  
  
“Excellent.” Albus stepped back and beamed at everyone around the table. “We should discuss where we intend to gather the Horcruxes and lure Voldemort.” It didn’t seem to matter to him that most of the Order members flinched at the name.  
  
Harry “came back to himself” with a shake and a blink, and stood there blandly smiling. Severus had to work to make out the banked fires of disgust burning in the back of his eyes.  
  
 _He is my Harry._  
  
*  
  
This time, Harry didn’t bother knocking on Severus’s door. He came through the wall like a specter, and Severus was flinging a Blasting Curse at him before he even realized what his instincts had urged him to do. Harry stepped easily enough around the curse, which reduced a chair to splinters instead. Then he collapsed into another chair and spat.  
  
Severus Summoned a glass and a Calming Draught without taking his eyes off Harry. Harry poured the potion into the glass, sipped at it, and then snorted.  
  
“No, thanks,” he said, and Transfigured the potion into Firewhisky.  
  
Severus blinked once. He had never heard of that spell. Then again, he thought as he watched Harry drink his way through the glass, he had never heard of the potion that Harry had invented to free himself, either.  
  
Harry was introducing him to many aspects of life that Severus would never have realized existed.  
  
Harry finished his drink and slammed it down on the table, shaking his head. “I hate it when he does that,” he whispered. “I spent years thinking that I was stupid for pretending to be my mum, because she must really be in me somewhere and  _she_ was the one he wanted to talk to. But she’s not there.” He sat back and stared at Severus. “You believe me, don’t you?”  
  
Severus nodded and moved towards him. “Not only that,” he said, as he touched Harry’s hair and spent a moment merely sliding his hand across it, “she would never have agreed to this if she was alive. Albus sees and hears only what he wants to, always.”  
  
“I’m glad someone agrees with me,” Harry sighed, and stretched his neck upwards. Despite the awkward angle, Severus bent down. Their lips stung, first from the angle and then because Harry was mashing them so hard together. Severus put a hand behind Harry’s neck to better control the pain.  
  
Harry drew back at last and tossed his head a little, as if he wanted to make his hair gleam even more in Severus’s eyes. “Fuck me?” he suggested.  
  
Severus felt as if  _he_ was the one who had drunk Firewhisky. He dragged Harry—and only Harry, with no ghost of Lily hanging around him, inside or out—into the bedroom.  
  
The last thing Severus had thought of, on the brink of war and the final battle that would probably leave one of his masters triumphant, was to get something he had wanted. But this was it, Harry’s straining chest and swearing mouth and kicking legs and inviting body.  
  
 _If I have it, then I can protect it. And I do not need Albus’s permission to do so._


	7. Covert Allies

“I really have no  _patience_  with the way he speaks, Severus.”  
  
Severus nodded calmly. He had come up to Molly before she could either leave the Order meeting or, more disastrously, speak her mind to Albus. Of course, there was the large chance that even her open speech wouldn’t convince Albus of the danger, but Severus preferred not to leave that up to luck.  
  
“By that, you mean…” Severus leaned over to pour some wine into her glass. They were sitting in Severus’s quarters, and Severus had let Molly stew some time in privacy before he came back with the wine and apologies for the delay. He had judged it the best way to build up her temper to exploding point.  
  
“The way he talked about  _sacrificing_ Harry! And everyone else! What were they thinking?” Molly slammed down her glass on the table next to her chair. Severus winced instinctively, but nothing spilled or shattered. “How could they stand there and act as if that poor boy’s life is a perfectly  _reasonable_ price to pay for peace?”  
  
“They have had years and years of terror.” In a cool, detached way, Severus could admire that much of Albus’s planning. He had waited to introduce Harry until the war had dragged on so long that the Order members had begun to think they would never be free, and they would grasp at any chance. “They don’t know him. A stranger’s death is small next to all the others they’ve already seen.”  
  
Molly stared at the floor, and Severus knew she was thinking about her twin sons. With hard-learned grace and tact, he waited until she had gathered herself before he went on.  
  
“But there are ways to rescue him. I will need your help with one of them, however.”  
  
“Anything.” Molly immediately looked up. “I’ll do anything.”  
  
“It’s mostly as a distraction for Albus. I need to brew a potion to help Harry, and I’ll need to begin sometime in the next day. It’s possible that Albus might want me for something else. Can you take up his attention?”  
  
Molly’s eyes snapped. She nodded.  
  
“And I’ll talk to Arthur about the poor boy,” she added, finally picking up her glass and taking a careful drink of the wine. Severus thought she handled the glass as if it belonged to a king.  _Well, she would not be used to such things._ “If Albus has dazzled him, I’ll just have to un-dazzle him.”  
  
Severus smiled, although he didn’t know how staunch an ally Arthur would be. Molly’s husband was simply too eager to please, too eager to get along with everyone, and he would put things off and mumble in the hope that something else would resolve the matter for him.  
  
“And I might work on Hermione, too,” Molly was musing, as she stared at the wine. “There’s things she could do well to learn.”  
  
“Leave her until later,” Severus said, and Molly turned to face him. “Harry wants to approach her privately.”  
  
That wasn’t true at all, but he shuddered to think of what would happen if Molly approached the girl and she guessed, via Molly’s actions, that there were a few Order members not loyal to Albus. It would be worse than almost any other member of the Order, because while Granger nurtured some sympathy for Harry, she also respected Albus to the point that Severus didn’t think she could see past his reputation.   
  
 _She would probably go and “talk” to Albus, confident that Professor I-Discovered-Twelve-Uses-For-Dragon’s-Blood could come up with another solution. And then the game would be over._  
  
“Oh, I  _see_.”  
  
It seemed he had missed some subtlety of his own, because Molly was beaming and nodding. Severus shook his head a little. “What do you see?”  
  
“Harry fancies that girl, isn’t that it?” Molly chuckled. “And he wants to get her alone and talk to her when he’ll have a better chance of explaining himself. And not so many adults around to embarrass him.”  
  
Severus remained still for a moment, staring at her. Then he shook his head. “No.”  
  
“No? Why, then?”  
  
Too late, Severus realized he should have allowed that deception to remain in place. Molly would have come up with the most harmless explanation, and wouldn’t have questioned it if Granger never said anything to her about Harry.  
  
But he had not allowed it to remain, and now he had to account for his words to the sharp eyes that watched him. Severus inclined his head and gave his own fears a different name. “Harry is concerned about Miss Granger’s loyalty to Albus.”  
  
Molly opened her mouth, probably to say something about the girl’s friendship with her daughter and how Miss Granger only needed the right persuasion, but then she gave a soundless sigh. “Yes. Well. It’s true we could persuade her if we had more time. But Albus seems intent on giving up Harry’s life soon.”  
  
“Yes, he does.” Severus was relieved that his unintentional slip had not cost them anything. He sipped from his own wine, to show willing, and Molly returned to hers. “If I ask you to go up to Albus tomorrow, would that be better than this evening?” He wasn’t sure what excuse Molly could give for remaining at Hogwarts when the rest of the Order members had departed, either to class or back home.  
  
“I can do it this evening.” Molly smiled, and Severus spent a moment wondering if the Hat had offered her Slytherin. “When the need is great, I can do things you wouldn’t _believe_.”  
  
 _That is probably true._ And he might not be seeing the smile of a Slytherin, but of a woman who would have destroyed the Death Eaters hunting her sons if she had only managed to get there in time.  
  
Severus inclined his head. “Then whenever you want to begin.”  
  
“That’s now.” Molly swallowed a little more wine, snapped the glass down so hard Severus would have to check the stem, and stalked out of his quarters.  
  
Severus hadn’t even leaned forwards to check on the wineglass when Harry’s voice said from behind him, “You didn’t have to take that so hard, her little hint about me being in love with Hermione. She probably thinks that Albus raised me with all sorts of romantic notions, but  _you_ know that’s not true.”  
  
Severus slowed his breathing with an effort and turned around. “I did not know you were there,” he said, as the Invisibility Cloak slithered from Harry’s shoulders.  
  
“Well,  _yes_.”  
  
Severus ignored that and moved forwards to study Harry. “Is Albus going to send you on more journeys for the Horcruxes, or is he going to do that himself?”  
  
“No.” A faint smile brushed against Harry’s lips and was gone. “Even if he goes himself, he needs me with him, to put down the blood and hair that will keep Voldemort from figuring out what we’re doing.” He locked his gaze on Severus. “There’s a locket that we need to find next. He informed me we’re leaving in an hour.”  
  
Severus hissed a little. “And if I had known  _that_ , then I could have told Molly to save her distraction.”  
  
“It won’t matter. If she doesn’t get him to put it off, she’ll worry him so that he’ll have it on his mind when he comes back.”  
  
“Will that make things more dangerous for you?” If Albus was distracted, he might not fight the traps or other dangers around the Horcruxes as well.  
  
“No.”  
  
Severus would have to trust that assessment, he supposed, because Harry wasn’t worried and he didn’t have the power to compel Albus to put this off. He extended a hand, and Harry ducked under it and came up with Severus’s palm resting on the nape of his neck. His eyes were shining softly.  
  
“You do what you need to,” he said softly. “The only thing I came by for was to offer the drop of blood from my scar so you can put it under a Preservation Charm.”  
  
“I am not to take it bright and fresh at the very moment I need it?”  
  
Harry only grinned, although Severus could think of more people who would be revolted by that statement. “No,” he said. “Because I might be hunting Horcruxes or battling Voldemort right then.” He bowed his head and touched his wand to the center of the lightning bolt scar. Severus watched him for a moment and wondered how he could be so precise about where to draw the blood without a mirror.  
  
Then he wanted to snort. Of course he knew. Harry had practiced this before, and who knew how many times? How many days, months, years, had he had nothing to do but contemplate magical books and try to understand them, or practice his potions theory, or dream of freedom?  
  
 _He must have been alone or with house-elves even more than I thought, since Albus was spending so much time at Hogwarts._  
  
There was an odd tinge to those thoughts, making them ones Severus did not want to think, and for more than the usual reasons. He shook them away, and asked, “Will you give me a moment to prepare the charm and the vials?”  
  
“Why plural? I only intended to give you one.”  
  
“I—would like more than one. In case I—make a mistake.”  
  
Harry lifted his head again and grinned at Severus as if he was the center of the universe right at that moment, a bright and shining sun. “How wonderful. You’re sometimes human enough to doubt yourself.”  
  
Severus whisked over to one shelf to fetch the vials, shaking his head when Harry would have said something else. He did not want to stand still, did not want to think and feel.  
  
In a moment, he had the vials ready and the incantation poised on the tip of his tongue, and Harry nodded to him and touched his wand to the center of the scar again, whispering a spell Severus had never heard. Perhaps it was one necessary to cut through not only the scarred skin but any less tangible defenses the Horcrux had.  
  
Whichever he needed, the fat drops of blood fell a second later, welling up around the tip of Harry’s wand and plopping neatly into the vials Severus was holding ready for them. Severus felt a soft shudder travel through him as he stared at the gleaming drops. They looked far more like rubies than blood ordinarily did.  
  
“That’s just the Dark magic in them.”  
  
Severus flushed and glanced up. Harry smiled at him, put out a hand and stroked the side of the vials, and then whipped the Invisibility Cloak over his head.  
  
“I need to leave. Albus expected me to be resting, and now I have to get to his office in twenty minutes.”  
  
Severus stretched out a hand before he thought better. He felt something soft and solid duck past him, then lift up, and he was thoroughly kissed by a pair of invisible lips that almost bore him backwards.  
  
He might have welcomed it if the vials had smashed and Harry needed to stay and give him some more, but instead Harry whisked past him, and Severus was alone with his blood.  
  
*  
  
This was the most complicated potion he had ever brewed.  
  
For some other people that would have deadened their hands, forbidden them to move, Severus knew, but he was cool-minded now and absolutely sure that he could do this. His hands darted through ingredients, plucked leaves and twigs and petals and claw scrapings, and sorted them into their proper piles, or placed them in the cauldron. He added water that poured absolutely straight down from his hold on the decanter or wand. He chanted the proper incantations for increasing the heat of the fire beneath the cauldron exactly when he needed to.  
  
He was clarified, exalted, uplifted, by the fact that he knew he would win freedom from the Dark Lord if he succeeded.  
  
There was no other prize so great.  
  
 _Except one._  
  
And to win that prize, as well, he would have to make sure that he could actually brew the potion.  
  
The drops of blood shimmered under the Preservation Charm in their vials. Severus gave them a grim smile and worked harder, measuring the clean white sand he needed to add to the cauldron’s bottom to the last grain.  
  
Then there were the Chinese Fireball claw scrapings, and how carefully he had to add them. He was aware, as they trickled between his fingers and into the potion, that something might explode at any moment. Or someone might knock on the door and shatter his concentration. Or the Dark Lord might summon him, and his left arm could twitch sideways, as it sometimes did when pulled by the force of the Mark, and too much of one ingredient would go into the potion, or not enough of another.  
  
He knew all that, and it made him leap more eagerly into the brewing, bright vicious gladness beating in him like wings.  
  
Severus knew when the moment had come to add the heartsblood hellebore. His head seemed to clang, as though he was carrying a heavy glass tray, or at least a tray with glasses on it. He turned from side to side, for a moment, making sure he had the petals close to him, and that he was ready, that they were all there, that his fingers had them within reach.  
  
He paused to breathe once before he began to feather the hellebore across the surface of the unstable liquid.  
  
Harry had told him when he would have to add the blood. Severus knew it could be done. He trusted in Harry’s theory and experiments to have carried him this far. But he also knew that it would have to be perfect.  
  
 _What else am I, as a Potions brewer?_  
  
His ingredients fell like snow. Severus sat there, watching them, and waiting for the moment when the hellebore would react with the claw scrapings and explode.  
  
He had to await it, because he was both an expert Potions brewer and someone who knew exactly how dangerous what he was doing now was.  
  
But nothing happened except that the potion bubbled a little. And then he had the vials open, his hands moving almost independently, and he placed the first drop of blood into the potion.   
  
The potion swirled as it accepted that tiny thread of Harry like a crimson hair, or a scarlet string. Severus stared at it as it dived into the potion. He knew he would have to move in a second—less than that—if the blood didn’t work as Harry had anticipated and the potion exploded after all. And his legs were poised and quivering, all his muscles taut.  
  
 _This is the way I prefer to live._  
  
The crimson thread of the blood disappeared, but the potion turned transparent. Severus knew the theoretical reasons for that, but at the moment, it was mostly convenient. He watched as the red dots of blood settled on top of the claw scrapings and the hellebore, and pacified them, winding around them as if someone had individually bound them all.  
  
And no explosion followed.   
  
Severus leaned back and closed his eyes. He attuned his senses to the swirl of the potion and reached out to add the final ingredients.  
  
The moments of dancing on the edge had passed; if he did as he should now, there was no more risk. Only a potion proceeding as it should, even if it was a potion that had never existed before this moment. Severus could feel himself detaching from those moments of intense planning and existence. He stirred one finger in the potion, even, and nothing happened.  
  
He would help Harry win freedom. He would help end this war and the threat of the Dark Lord, and they would flee far away together and end the threat of Albus.  
  
But at the moment, besides Harry himself, what Severus most valued winning was the right to continue brewing potions like this.  
  
*  
  
“What was it like?”  
  
Severus had been woken by someone banging on his door. He hadn’t known why Harry couldn’t simply pass into the room through the walls and wards the way he had apparently done earlier, but he hadn’t questioned him. Not when he saw the ghastly pallor of Harry’s face, floating like a moon in the gleaming hood of the Invisibility Cloak.  
  
And not with the way that Harry had immediately collapsed into a chair and asked for something to drink. He had swallowed half a bottle of Firewhisky at once, and without coughing or choking. Severus knew what that said about the ferocity of the fire burning inside him.  
  
Harry turned to him in response to the question, and chuckled. “You want to know?”  
  
“I don’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answers to.”  
  
“From some of the things Albus has said about your teaching methods, I’m not sure that’s true.”  
  
Severus looked at him mildly, the same way he would a Slytherin student who had decided to act ridiculous. Harry sobered and nodded, setting aside the Firewhisky.  
  
“All right. This one was a cup that apparently once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff. And a locket that once belonged to Salazar Slytherin.”  
  
“He had you go after two at once?” Severus hadn’t realized until then how much trust he’d put in the declaration that Albus only intended to collect one Horcrux at a time.  
  
Harry opened his eyes and shot Severus a wry glance. “Yes, he did. And I promise that that’s not why I look the way I do.”  
  
“There were more guardians on these Horcruxes.”  
  
“Of course there were.” Harry let his head fall back against the chair and his eyes drift shut again.  
  
“He forced you to face them by yourself.”  
  
“That,” Harry said, with a small shake of his head, “depends on what definition of  _force_ you’re using.”  
  
“Mine.”  
  
“Then perhaps he did. But some of them wouldn’t have yielded to anyone who didn’t also carry a Horcrux or who  _was_ a Horcrux.” Harry was quiet for a moment. “And he didn’t want to bring the ring with us in case Voldemort was waiting for us and it somehow got recaptured.”  
  
“You will be glad to be free of him,” Severus said, and stood up to move behind Harry. Harry at once turned his head, acknowledging that he could hear Severus moving, but didn’t open his eyes.  
  
“Both of them.”  
  
Severus paused. It was such a perfect echo of his own sentiments that he could not help his response. Then he put out a hand and slowly rubbed through Harry’s rough mop, massaging his scalp until Harry gasped and reached up to catch his wrist.  
  
“I’d love to, but I’m exhausted and I couldn’t give you anything worth playing with. Sorry.”  
  
“Then sit still,” Severus murmured, a game coming to mind that was worth exploring for its novelty. “And allow me to do what  _I_ will. Free yourself for a moment from Dumbledore’s demands and even your own demands for freedom. Allow me,” he added, and scratched a little harder, when he felt the waiting resistance in Harry’s body.  
  
Harry balanced for a moment more on a teetering edge. Severus understood better than most people how difficult it would be. And then he let his head fall forwards and his mouth open a little as he whispered, “All right.”  
  
Severus kissed where he had been rubbing, and gentled his hand until Harry was softly gasping. Then he moved around in front of him and knelt down, casting a Cushioning Charm on the carpet before he reached to undo the buttons on Harry’s robes.  
  
In truth, he didn’t expect to be down there long enough to need the charm. But better to cast it and not need it than need it and interrupt both of them.  
  
He caressed Harry’s thighs and arse as he drew out his cock. Harry hadn’t even opened his eyes. He was only leaning back, offering himself up wholly to Severus. His breathing had changed to a softer, deeper sound, but hadn’t got faster.  
  
 _He trusts me that much,_ Severus thought triumphantly as he took Harry in his mouth. It felt like a victory in a contest, although Albus would hardly know they had been competing.  
  
Then Severus banished all thoughts of Albus from his mind and bent to the important task of sucking Harry. Harry was squirming in a few seconds, but it was a slow, dreamy squirming. Severus looked up. Harry’s eyes were still closed, but now his lips had turned up in a small smile.  
  
Severus touched his leg, and found a sensitive spot that made Harry shudder. He didn’t look down, though. Severus found he approved of that.  
  
 _He trusts me to touch him however I like, and carry him away to the heights of pleasure that only I can provide._  
  
He sucked lightly, continually pausing, with even lighter taps of his tongue on the head of Harry’s erection. He wanted to see if it would make Harry sit up and complain. He kept sitting back and ignoring the heat twisting like a poker in the center of his chest, only wanting to see the effect on Harry.  
  
It was never any different, except that Harry had slouched down in the chair and opened his legs further and offered his groin to Severus more pointedly whenever he paused.  
  
Severus finally smiled and threw himself into the task of making Harry come. Harry moaned, as if it was an offering he was placing on an altar, and reached down with one hand. Severus moved his head so that Harry’s hand was firmly on his hair. Harry only shivered, though, and didn’t try to grasp.  
  
 _He is different from anyone I have ever known._  
  
Severus sucked sharply enough that Harry started, and  _that_ finally made him come, the orgasm rushing out of him with a sigh echoing from Harry’s parted lips. He turned his head to the side, and murmured, and finally opened his eyes.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, before he slid onto the floor next to Severus, a single, graceful, boneless collapse, and reached out and touched Severus’s own erection.  
  
The touch was lighter than any touch Severus had ever needed before, but that didn’t matter. He came, too, his hands clenching in the robes Harry still wore. Harry curled towards him and rested against his side.   
  
They knelt like that in silence profound enough that Severus didn’t want to break it. But finally his knees did start to ache, and he eased backwards and cast another Cushioning Charm on the floor. If they were going to spend the night here, he didn’t want to wake up with cramps in his neck and back that he couldn’t explain.  
  
It was Harry, in the end, who got him off the floor and dragged him towards the bedroom. Severus tried to say something about that. Harry shouldn’t have to do it. He shouldn’t have to take care of Severus when he was so tired.  
  
But Harry smiled at him and said, “I’m still younger,” and cleaned Severus off with a spell and took his clothes away and snuggled him into bed. Then he joined him, murmuring something about heaving to leave before morning.  
  
Yes, he would have to. Severus knew that. But at least—he thought it somewhere between the time he eased his hand around Harry’s shoulder and the moment that he opened his eyes alone in the morning—they had taken a step towards a future where Harry could have this in more than name.


End file.
